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Inbrary of Dr. A. A. Hodge. Presented. - 


Brey ye D4 1885 


Defence and confirmation of 
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“DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION’ 


OF 


APACE. enya) aD eT. 


Six Lectures 


DELIVERED BEFORE TH“ WESTERN THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY IN 
THE YEAR 1885, on THE FOUNDATION OF THE 
ELLIOTYr LECTURESHIP, 


FUNK & WAGNALLS 
NEW YORK: 1885, 
10 AND 12 Dey STREET. 


All Rights Reserved. 


LONDON: 
44 FLEET Srreet, 


Entered, according to Act of Congress, in the year 1885, by 
FUNK & WAGNALLS, 
In the Office of the Librarian of Congress at Washington, D. C. 


PREFACE. 


Tue Elliott Lectureship is so called in honor of the 
Rev. David Elliott, D.D., LL.D., who was for sixty- 
three years a minister of Jesus Christ in the Presbyterian 
Church, and for thirty-eight years a professor in the 
Western Theological Seminary. 

For the purity of his life, for the beauty of his moral 
character, for the abundance of his labors in the Church, 
and especially for his eminent services as a professor of 
theology through so many years, this honor is peculiarly 
due to his revered memory. 

The first course of lectures given under the Lecture- 
ship was delivered in 1880 by the Rev. Alexander F. 
Mitchell, D.D., St. Andrews, Scotland. 

The second course, given during the winter of 
1884-85, is now presented in printed form to the alumni 
and friends of the Seminary. 


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CONTENTS, 


LECTURE I. 
By Rev. Witu1am M. Taynor, D.D., LL.D., New Yor. 


PAGE 
The Argument from the Messianic PYOPHOCIOSS. Vives.cvcce dives: 70 


LECTURE IL. 


By Rey. Carrorz Curter, D.D., Presmpentr or WESTERN Rez- 
SERVE COLLEGE, CLEVELAND, O. 


The Philosophy of Religion Considered ag Pointing toward a 
Divine Redeemer of Men......... ..... ease eee eWC daaeee s 28 


LECTURE III. 
By Rey, Srmon J. McPuerson, D.D., Cuicaco, Inu. 


Jesus Christ, the Unique Reconciler of Contradictories in Thought 
and Oharacter:.... 00... ..s 05. .e Rate 9 hase t RE Ate arin, 59 


LECTURE IV. 
By Rev. Natuanten West, D.D., St. Paun, Minn. 


An Apologetic for the Resurrection of Christ............... see 80 


LECTURE V. 


By Rey. Syzvester F, Scoven, PResIDENT oF THE UNIVERSITY oF 
Wooster, Woostzr, O, 


Christianity and CRYIN ASOD AN, tateg oo oe Utne ie inat maath g 130 


LECTURE VI. 
By Rev. Henry OC, McCoox, D.D., ParapEnpata. 


Foreordination in Nature: As an Argument for the Being of 
God, Illustrated from the Maternal Instinct of Insects....,, 174 


2s athe bat. ~e 


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LECTURE I. 


The Argument from the Messianie Prophecies. 


BY REV. WILLIAM M. TAYLOR, D.D., LL.D. 


In support of their claim to be received as the word of 
God, the Scriptures, among other evidences, set before 
us that of prophecy ; and I propose at this time to give 
a specimen of the argument which is built thereon, A 
full treatment of so large a subject would require a 
volume; but I must content myself with bringing under 
your notice only a few of the more important Messianic 
predictions contained in the Old Testament, together 
with their historical fulfilment, and drawing the infer- 
ences which are fairly warranted by the correspondence 
between the two. | 

The term prophet means one who speaks for another. 
It implies that he has received both his authority and his 
message from him whom he represents. Thus Jehovah 
said to Moses,* ‘‘ See, I have made thee a god to Pharaoh ; 
and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet ;’’ and what 
these words denote is made perfectly clear by those 
others spoken shortly before at the bush +—‘‘ And Aaron 
shall be thy spokesman unto the people : and he shall 
be, even he shall be to thee instead of a mouth, and 
thou shalt be to him instead of God.’’ In the specific 
scriptural sense of the word, therefore, the ‘* prophet” 
was one authorized and qualified to speak to men the 


A i ay ee + Ex. 4:16. 


8 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


message which he had received for them from God, and 
‘* prophecy”’ was the message so delivered by him. Their 
discourses partook both of an ethical and a predictive 
character ; but the predictive was subordinated to the 
ethical, which, indeed, was always the staple of their ut- 
terances. Their highest duty was to declare the truth in 
God’s name; and in their labors among God’s chosen 
people they wrought for the preservation of Israel’s polit- 
ical existence—for morality, for education, for everything 
that tended to elevate those to whom they were primarily 
sent, while at the same time they secured ultimately for 
all mankind a written record of the revelation which had 
been made through them. This implied a claim on their 
part that God was supernaturally present with them, to 
guide them what and how they should speak and write ; 
and of that claim prediction was the authoritative indorse- 
ment. It was to the message by which it was’ accompa- 
nied what the miracles of Christ and His apostles were 
to the doctrines in connection with which they were 
wrought. Indeed, in this case the prediction was the 
miracle, for foreknowledge is as supernatural in the psy- 
chological sphere as the power ina miracle, commonly 
so called, is in the physical. 

But just as Christ and His apostles were more than 
miracle-workers, so the prophets were more than mere 
foretellers of future events. They were, in truth, the 
representatives of God among the people, to keep alive 
His knowledge in the midst of them, to stimulate them 
to holiness, to reprove, rebuke, and exhort them as occa- 
sion might require, and especially to prepare them for 
the coming of that great Deliverer who was to appear 
- once ‘in the end of the world to put away sin by the 
sacrifice of Himself.’? The manner in which the truth 
which they were to proclaim was revealed to them is 


THE ARGUMENT FROM MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. 9 


beyond our ken, but the revelation itself took its form 
from the cireumstances in which they were placed, and 
from the individuality of the prophets themselves. God 
used them as men, and not as machines, and through 
their message to their own times He spoke to men of all 
times. To have, therefore, anything like a just concep- 
tion of the work which they did we must set them in the 
environment of their age, and get a correct idea of the 
kind of evils with which they were required to contend, 
and in this department good service has been rendered to 
the Biblical student, even by writers from whom he may 
be constrained to differ on other matters of great impor- 
tance. But when we get a full appreciation of their 
work we are able to see how, apart altogether from their 
predictions, and looking only at the ethical character of 
their messages, a striking and irrefutable argument may 
be drawn for their divine inspiration. Just as the 
supernatural in Christ may be conclusively proved from 
the peerless excellence of His character and the lofty 
morality of His teachings, taken in connection with the 
absolute impossibility that these could be the simple prod- 
ucts of such an age as that in which He appeared upon 
the earth, so the divine mission of the Old Testament 
prophets may be established from the contrast which 
their writings present, especially in their theology and 
morality, to the religious literature of contemporary 
times in other lands. Here were a body of men stand- 
ing forth for centuries as witnesses for monotheism in 
creed and for holiness in life, in the face not only of the 
polytheism and immorality of surrounding nations, but 
also of a perpetual tendency toward these same evils 
among many of their own people ; and yet from first to 
last they never wavered in their utterances, or lowered 
their testimony in the least. Take the oldest religious 


10 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


books of other nationalities, and mark the contrast be- 
tween them and the writings of the Hebrew prophets ; 
then explain, if you can, on merely natural principles, 
how it came that in such a number of short treatises, 
written by men at distant intervals, there is one purpose 
running through them all; how that purpose was not 
merely of national importance, but included in it all the 
people of the earth ; and how such a world-embracing 
purpose was conspicuous in the sacred writings of a 
people who have been correctly described as ‘‘ of no 
great power or influence, limited in number, possessed 
of many high qualities, but narrow-minded, prejudiced 
against foreigners, and devoid of all cosmopolitan ten- 
dencies.’’* Truly, to believe that such a literature was a 
spontaneous growth among such a people is harder far 
than it is to accept the statement that it was God who, 
‘‘at sundry times and in divers manners,’’ spake thus to 
the fathers of the Hebrew nation by the prophets. 

I have said so much to indicate that [ am by no means 
insensible to the cogency and importance of the argu- 
ment which may be drawn from the writings of the Old 
Testament, apart altogether from the consideration of 
the predictions which they contain. But it seems to me 
that too little attention has been given, in recent times, 
to the predictions. In the controversies of the eight- 
eenth century the ethical character of the writings of the 
prophets was all but entirely ignored, while the predic- 
tions were exclusively regarded ; but now the pendulum 
has swung to the other extreme, and the tendency is to 
depreciate the predictions by giving undue prominence 
to the didactic element in the prophetical books. We 


* See Prophecy a Preparation for Christ, by Dean Payne Smith, 
p. 3. 


THE ARGUMENT FROM MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. th 


cannot forget, however, that the Lord Himself and His . 
immediate followers made great use of the Old Testament 
in their reasonings to show that the Christ must needs 
suffer and rise again from the dead; and in a day when 
the very possibility of the supernatural is by many 
denied, it must be of immense service to bring up the 
facts which here are indisputable, and ask how else they 
are to be accounted for than by the inspiration of the 
prophet on the one hand, and the all-controlling provi- 
dence of God upon the other. 

Without further preface, then, let me address myself 
to the work which I have taken in hand. And, first, let 
me lay down the conditions under which alone any valid 
argument from the alleged fulfilment of a prediction can 
be drawn. They are these three: First, the prediction 
should be not only anterior to the fulfilment, but so long 
anterior to it as to lift it above the range of mere human 
foresight ; second, it should be so constructed that the 
story of the fulfilment could not be manufactured out of 
its terms; and third, the fulfilment should be uncon- 
scious and undesigned on the part of those who brought 
it about. 

Now, with these conditions in mind, let us open the 
Old Testament Scriptures. Almost on the very first 
page, and in connection with the punishment of our first 
parents for the first sin, we come upon these words in 
the doom of the serpent: ‘‘I will put enmity between 
thee and the-woman, and between thy seed and her seed ; 
it shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his 
heel.’’ * Now, the discussion of the date of Genesis is 
quite unnecessary here, and it makes little matter, so far 
as the present argument is concerned, whether this was 


* Gen. 3: 16. 


12 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


first written by Moses, or whether he found it in an 
ancient document and incorporated it in his narrative. 
In any case, it was written many hundreds of years before 
the advent of Christ. It is of no consequence, either, 
for the purposes of this argument, whether we take the 
story as an allegory, or, as I feel bound to accept it, as a 
veritable history. However regarded, the serpent stands 
for Satan; the woman is viewed apart from the man; 
and her seed denotes some individual in human nature in 
whose history the conflict between the serpent and the 
race as a whole should culminate, the result being the 
crushing of the serpent’s head and the bruising of the 
conqueror’s heel. As one has put it, the words imply 
‘that the human victor would himself experience the 
whole power of the enemy in the very act of overcoming 
him.”? All this seems enigmatical enough ; but when 
we read it in the light of the New Testament we have 
the true interpretation given to it, for the first time, by 
its fulfilment. In the Lord Jesus Christ, who was 
‘conceived by the Holy Ghost and born of the Virgin 
Mary,”’ we have one who is, as no one in human nature 
but Himself has been, ‘‘ the seed of the woman,’’ while 
in the crucifixion on Calvary we have the death-blow 
given to Satan when Christ, ‘‘ having spoiled principali- 
ties and powers, made a show of them openly, triumph- 
ing over them,’’ and introducing a new birth for the 
race by His own death. No one looking at the original 
words could of his own ingenuity have devised such a 
fulfilment ; yet when it came it fully met the require- 
ments of the case ; and as the seed of the serpent—those 
murderous Jews, who were of their father the devil— 
hissed out their malice at the meek and lowly sufferer, 
they knew not that they were verifying this first of all 
the Messianic oracles. 


2 
THE ARGUMENT FROM MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. 13 


Passing on, in our perusal of the Book of Genesis, we 
come upon the promises made to Abraham; and though 
we might find in them all much material for profitable 
remark, it will be sufficient for our present purpose that 
we dwell only upon one. Take, then, the first of them, 
which was given to the patriarch ere yet he had left his 
native Ur of the Chaldees, and for the purpose of 
encouraging him to leave that for another, but yet un- 
known, land. ‘‘ I will make of thee a great nation, . .. 
and in thee shall all the families of the earth be 
blessed.”? * Here again the date of the promise, ‘‘ I 
will make of thee a great nation,’’ on any theory regard- 
ing the age of the Book of Genesis, was long anterior to 
the rise of the Jewish nation. Yet how completely it 
has been fulfilled in the history of that people! But 
more remarkable still the prediction, ‘‘in thee shall all 
the families of the earth be blessed,” was, as Paul has 
made abundantly plain, a preaching of the Gospel unto 
Abraham, a foreshadowing of the fact that ‘‘ the blessing 
of Abraham should come on the Gentiles through Jesus 
Christ, that we might receive the promise of the Spirit 
through faith.’’+ There, millenniums ago, is the predic- 
tion, and even now it is being fulfilled before men’s 
eyes. or wherever the Gospel has gone it has carried 
richest blessings in its train. It has elevated woman, 
purified the family, taken the little children in its arms, 
stimulated benevolence, widened civil and religious lib- 
erty, emancipated the slave, lifted the savage into civili- 
zation, and dispelled the darkness of the tomb by bring- 
ing life and immortality to light. These are facts that 
cannot be controverted, and yet, as we see, they are but 
the onward march toward its fulfilment of this prophecy, 


* Gen. 12 : 2, 3, + Gal, 3:14, 


14 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH, 


which was given more than three thousand years ago to 
Abraham, ere yet he left his country and his kindred to 
become the first and greatest of the Pilgrim Fathers. 
Take, next, that remarkable utterance of the dying 
Jacob, in his blessing of Judah—*‘ A sceptre shall not 
depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between. his 
feet, until that Shiloh come; and unto him shall be the 
obedience of the peoples.’?* This is the translation 
given in the Speaker’s Commentary and sanctioned by 
many eminent Hebrew scholars ; and the variation sug- 
gested by some, ‘‘ until he came to Shiloh,’’ has found 
little favor. The term Shiloh has been differently un- 
derstood ; but now the best expositors are divided be- 
tween these two meanings, ‘‘ The peaceful,’’ or ‘* He 
whose it is,” the one referring to the character of the 
coming ruler, and the other to his right to the sceptre of 
Judah ; but as the latter would require a considerable 
change in the Hebrew word, involving even the leaving 
out of one of its letters, I prefer the former. Now, 
from the first this oracle has been understood of the 
Messiah, and as such it indicates that He should be of 
the tribe of Judah ; that when He came He should be 
‘‘ the peaceful one,’’ and that He should come just before 
the sceptre should depart from Judah. The date of the 
prophecy is that of the Book of Genesis, at least, and 
therefore on any theory it was long anterior to the 
advent of Christ. Moreover, the character of the facts 
foretold is such that no one could of himself bring about 
their fulfilment. Now we know that our Lord sprang 
out of Judah, and every one must recognize the appro- 
priateness of Shiloh, the peaceful one, as the name of Him 
on whose birth night the heavenly host sang, ‘* Glory to 


* Gen, 49 : 10, 


THE ARGUMENT FROM MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. 15 


God in the highest, peace on earth, good will to men.” 
But more difficulty has been felt about the time of His 
appearance, as here indicated ; yet even here we have no 
need to shrink from the strictest scrutiny. I cannot put 
the truth about it into briefer compass, or in a clearer 
manner, than it has been expressed by Dr. W. H. 
Thomson, a beloved office-bearer of my own church, in 
his admirable work on Christ in the Old Testament, 
which he has named ‘‘ The Great Argument.’’? * ‘* The 
figures used,’’ says he, ‘‘ denote a continued national 
existence on the part of Judah. . . . The sceptre is em- 
blematic of an actual executive authority, whether king 
or magistrate, bearing sway over some definite territory 
or country rather than over a scattered race. . . . The 
lawgiver denotes that other indispensable adjunct to a 
real nation—namely, the possession of its own courts and 
institutions. (Now) over against this ancient prophecy 
stands this fact in history, that with the brief exception 
of the stay in Babylon . . . the tribe of Judah main- 
tained its specific existence from the beginning of He- 
brew history down to the overthrow by Titus, a nation 
in the strict sense of the term, when that is used in dis- 
tinction from a race or people.’’ Under the Persians, in 
the years of its independence after the successful conflict 
with a portion of the empire left by Alexander, and 
under the Roman power, though such a thing was 
exceptional in its dealing with subject peoples, the 
Jewish nation retained these badges of its existence, and 
lost them only after that memorable siege which Josephus 
has described, when Jerusalem was destroyed. Since 
then the Jews have been a race, a people, but not a na- 
tion. The sceptre has departed, the lawgiver has dis- 


- * The Great Argument, p. 104. 


16 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


appeared, but not before the Shiloh had come, to whom 
—and here we have a repetition of the promise made to 
Abraham—‘‘ shall be the obedience of the peoples.” 
Thus distinct, on the one hand, are the meaning and the 
antiquity of this prophecy ; and on the other the precise- 
ness of its fulfilment—a fulfilment which, as it extended 
through centuries and involved the action of a state like 
that of Rome, whose rulers had never even heard of the 
existence of the prophecy, could not have been brought 
about by any collusion. 

We take, next, the prediction of Moses concerning his 
greater successor. It is to be found in Deut. 18 : 15, 
‘* The Lord thy God will raise up unto thee a prophet from 
the midst of thee, of thy brethren, like unto me ; unto 
him ye shall hearken.” Now, it makes little difference, 
for the cogency of this argument, how you settle the ques- 
tions concerning the authorship and date of Deuterono- 
my. Ina matter of this kind, the prescience that sees 
through seven centuries is just as supernatural as that 
which sees through thirteen. We know that the book 
was in existence before the captivity of the Jews, and 
that is enough. Yet see how thoroughly this prediction 
was fulfilled in Christ. It may have had, as some 
imagine, a partial verification in the case of the different 
prophets that appeared in the history of Israel, but its 
terms are satisfied in none of these. The pith of the 
prediction is in these words, ‘‘ like unto me ;’’ and the 
likeness is not moral, but official. Now, as Moses was 
the mediator between the nation of Israel and Jehovah, 
so Christ is the Mediator between God and men; as 
Moses was the introducer of a new economy, so Jesus 
was the Inaugurator of a new dispensation ; as Moses 
was the intercessor for the people, so Jesus ‘‘ ever liveth 
to make intercession for them that come unto God by 


a 


THE ARGUMENT FROM MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. 1% 


Him.’? Thus we have the official likeness in every par- 
ticular, and Moses here has given a description out of 
which no mythical Messiah could be constructed, but by 
which the real Messiah might be easily recognized when 
He appeared. 

We have a similar prediction in that message which 
Nathan brought to David, when the King of Israel ex- 
pressed his purpose to build a temple to Jehovah. The 
only difference is that, while Moses speaks, as became his 
time and his office, of the great coming Deliverer as a 
Prophet, Nathan now, in the fuller development of the 
nation, refers to Him as a King, and as the Son of 
David. Thus He who was at first described as the seed 
of the woman is gradually more and more definitely 
characterized as the Son of Shem, the seed of Abraham, 
of the tribe of Judah, a Prophet like unto Moses, a King 
in the family of David. Here is the gist of Nathan’s 
message : * * It was in thy heart to build God an house, 
but the time has not yet come for that ; it is well that it 
was in thy heart to do it, and thy son shall carry out thy 
plan ; but God will build thee an howse’’—that is, will 
maintain thy dynasty—for ‘‘ thine house and thy king- 
dom shall be established forever before thee : thy throne 
shall be established before thee.”? This might not be 
very clearly intelligible either to David or to Nathan at 
the time ; but when, now, we take into consideration the 
fact that Jesus was of the house and lineage of David, 
that He came to found, and did found, a kingdom not 
of this world, but spiritual, and set up in the hearts of 
men—-a kingdom yet to be universal and destined to be 
perpetual, we are at no loss to find the interpretation of 
the promise in its fulfilment, for, as Keil has said, ‘* The 


* 2 Sam. 7 : 5, 16. 


18 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH, 


posterity of David could last forever only by running 
out in a person who lives forever—that is, by culminat- 
ing in the Messiah, who lives forever, and of whose king- 
dom there is no end.”’ 

But now let us take the oracle of Micah as to the place 
of the great Deliverer’s birth. ‘¢ But thou, Bethlehem 
Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of 
Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that 
is to be ruler in Israel ; whose goings forth have been from 
of old, from everlasting.’’ * I cannot go into the minute 
consideration of the section of Micah’s writings of which 
these words form a part; let it suffice to say that from 
the time when Micah uttered them up till that of the 
rejection of Christ by the Jews, the Israelites themselves 
universally regarded this oracle as strictly Messianic. 
Even the chief priests and the scribes, when Herod asked 
them where the Christ was to be born, answered, without 
hesitation, ‘“‘ In Bethlehem of Judea,”’ with a reference 
to this passage ; and it was only when they found that 
this interpretation of the prophecy identified Jesus of 
Nazareth as the Messiah that the later Jews began to 
seek for it another explanation, But a close inspection 
of the whole tenor of the context will lead to the conclu- 
sion that this original application of the passage is cor- 
rect. Here, then, we have the birthplace of the Mes- 
siah specified. And when we open the New Testament 
we find that Christ was born at Bethlehem. Yet His 
birth there was what men nowadays, perhaps, would call 
an accident. Mary had gone thither with Joseph, not 
dreaming of this prophecy at all, but in obedience to the 
decree of the emperor, which required the enrolment at 
that place of all belonging to the family of David; and 


* Micah 5 : 2, 


THE ARGUMENT FROM MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. 19 


so, in a quite incidental and undesigned manner, the 
prediction of seven hundred years before was fully veri- 
fied. 

Turn with me now to the fifty-third chapter of Isaiah. 
That prophecy was long prior in date to the appearance 
of the Messiah. We do not care to inquire here whether 
it was written by Isaiah himself or by Ewald’s ‘‘ Great 
Unknown.’’ We have evidence, in the Septuagint ver- 
sion, of its existence, at least two hundred years before 
Christ. Neither can it be alleged that it was so plain a 
description of the events that one might have con- 
structed the Gospel history out of it; for though the 
Jews originally referred it to their Messiah, they still 
failed to get out of it the idea that he was to be a 
sufferer. Yet mark how the history at once interprets 
and fulfils it. The ministry of our Lord prior to His 
death was to human view so unsuccessful that He might 
well say, ‘‘ Who hath believed our report, and to whom 
is the arm of the Lord revealed?’ His bearing before 
His accusers was such as exactly to harmonize with the 
words, ‘‘ He was oppressed and He was afflicted, yet He 
opened not His mouth: He is brought as a lamb to the 
slaughter, and as a sheep before her shearers is dumb, so 
He openeth not His mouth.’? The manner of His death 
is indicated in the expression, ‘‘ He was numbered with 
the transgressors ;’’ yet no one was thinking of that 
when they crucified Him between two malefactors ; and 
the peculiar incidents connected with Mis burial are 
shadowed forth in the clause, ‘‘ His grave was appointed 
for Him with the wicked, but He was with the rich in 
His death,” a statement never thought of, either by 
the Roman soldiers when they prepared three graves for 
those who were executed that day on Calvary, or by 
Joseph when, in the kindness of his heart, he offered his 


20 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


new tomb because it was nigh at hand. Then, in the 
description which comes after, ‘‘ He shall see His seed, 
He shall prolong His days, and the pleasure of the Lord 
shall prosper in His hand. He shall see of the travail of 
his soul, and shall be satisfied,’’ we have a reference to 
events which, without expressly mentioning His resur- 
rection and ascension, do yet fit in fully with what we 
know were the results of His entrance into glory and 
His bestowal of the gift of the Holy Spirit. For my 
part, I do not see how one can read the history in the 
light of this prophecy, or this prophecy in the light of 
the history, without feeling the force of Peter’s words, 
‘‘ Now, brethren, 1 wot that through ignorance ye did 
it, as did also your rulers; but those things which God 
before had showed by the mouth of all the prophets that 
Christ should suffer, He hath so fulfilled.” 

Your time will permit me to refer to only one predic- 
tion more. Let it be that in the ninth of Daniel, 
wherein, in answer to Daniel’s prayer concerning the 
close of the captivity, Gabriel gave him a revelation, 
which not only unfolded to him the nature and effects of 
Messiah’s work, but also the time of His appearance. 
True, the date of Daniel’s own book has been disputed ; 
and some have contended, falsely as I believe, that the 
prophetical parts of it were not written until after the 
days of Antiochus Epiphanes. But that is of small 
account here, for we find this also in the Septuagint ver- 
sion of the Hebrew Scriptures two hundred years before 
Christ, and prescience such as that is as much above 
human foresight as it would be through five hundred 
years. Here, then, are the words, given in the best 
translation which I have been able to find: ‘‘ Seventy 
sevens (of years) are determined in reference to thy 
people and thy holy city, to shut up, or restrain sin, to 


THE ARGUMENT FROM MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. 21 


sea] transgression, to cover iniquity, to bring in everlast- 
ing righteousness, to seal the vision and the prophet, and 
to anoint the Holy of Holies. Know and understand ; 
from the going forth of a decree for restoring and re- 
building Jerusalem unto Messiah the Prince are seven 
sevens and sixty and two sevens. Thestreets shall be re- 
stored and built again ; it is decided and shall be, though 
in distress of times. And after sixty-two sevens Messiah 
shall be cut off, and there shall be nothing more to Him. 
Then the people of a prince that shall come shall destroy 
the city and the sanctuary ; its end shall be with that 
sweeping flood ; even unto the end of the war desolations 
are determined. One seven shall make the covenant 
effective to many. ‘The middle of the seven shall make 
sacrifice and offerings cease ; then down upon the sum- 
mit of the abomination comes the desolator, even till a 
complete destruction determined shall be poured upon 
the desolate.’’* Now here, more important even than the 
date, are the descriptive passages referring to the work 
of the Messiah. The phrases to ‘‘shut up or restrain 
sin’? and to ‘‘ cover iniquity,’’ describe most appropri- 
ately the sacrificial nature and sanctifying effects of the 
death of Christ ; the expressions to bring in everlasting 
righteousness and to seal up the vision and the prophet, 
refer to the work of Christ as furnishing His people 
with an everlasting righteousness, and sealing up by ful- 
filling the prophecies of the Old Testament; and the 
anointing of the Holy of Holies, may refer to the purifi- 
cation and consecration of the Temple by the presence 
in it of the incarnate God. The portion of the oracle 
referring to the first seven sevens of years we need not 
go into now ; but in the description of what should come 


* See Coles on Daniel, p. 401. 


RR DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


at the end of the sixty-nine sevens, we find that in the 
middle of the next heptade sacrifice and offering should 
be made to cease, which clearly points to the doing away 
of all legal sacrifices by the death of Christ. Other 
expressions are equally significant, and all identify the 
Messiah here with Jesus of Nazareth. Now, let us look 
at the matter of the date. The point from which these 
seventy sevens are reckoned is the issuing of a command- 
ment to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. But that cannot 
refer to the edict of Cyrus, or its repetition by Darius 
Hystaspes, for these had respect only to the Temple, and 
said nothing about the city. Itis probable, therefore, that 
it designates either the commission given by Artaxerxes 
Longimanus to Ezra in the seventh year of his reign, or 
that given by the same monarch to Nehemiah in the 
twentieth year of his reign. The former of these is pre- 
ferred by Pusey and other commentators of authority in 
the case; and as the seventh year of Artaxerxes Longi- 
manus corresponds, in the most accurate chronology, 
with the year 457 B.c., we may easily calculate thus. 
Sixty-nine sevens, or four hundred and eighty-three 
years, bring us to the year 26 of our era. But if, as 
many have shown with much probability, Christ was 
really born four years before that which was fixed on 
ultimately as the year a.p. 1,* He would be, in the year 
A.D. 26, in His thirtieth year ; and we know from Luke 
that His baptism, or public manifestation to the people, 
took place ‘‘ when He began to be about thirty years of 
age.”’ Further, in the middle of the seventieth seven, 
or heptade, the Lord was crucified, for, as almost all are 
agreed, and the Gospel by John makes it all but cer- 
tain, His public ministry lasted three years and a half, 


* See Pusey on Daniel, p. 172. 


THE ARGUMENT FROM MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. 29 


Still, again, it is said, ‘‘ One seven shall make the covenant 
effective tomany.’’ During the first half of this period, 
as we have just seen, the Lord’s personal ministry con- 
tinued ; but the people, as a whole, would not receive 
Him—‘‘ there was nothing more to Him” from them : 
and the remaining three and a half years probably mark 
the time during which the Gospel was preached to the 
Jews after Christ’s resurrection and before the conver- 
sion of the Gentiles showed that the special privileges of 
the chosen people were at an end. Finally, we have 
here a very distinct indication of the overthrow of Jeru- 
salem by the Romans, which followed not indeed imme- 
diately in time, but yet as the immediate effect of the 
rejection of the Messiah by the Jews. Now, bear in 
mind that four hundred and ninety years from the year 
B.c. 457 bring us to the year a.p. 33 ; that, according 
to the corrected chronology of many, the crucifixion took 
place in the year a.p. 29, and that that is the middle of 
the last of Daniel’s heptades at which the Messiah was to 
make an end of sin by the sacrifice of Himself, and you 
will see how marvellous the fulfilment is. I know that 
in the matter of dates we must speak with caution, and 
therefore I have been the more particular to give the 
greater emphasis to the phrases in this prophecy which 
describe the nature and effect of Messiah’s work. Still, 
‘it is remarkable that the widest divergence between 
the many different computations made from this starting- 
point to the end of the sixty-nine sevens, when the Mes- 
siah should appear, do not vary ten years either way from 
the date of the preaching of John the Baptist and the 
first appearance of Jesus Christ.’ * 

Here, however, I must rest my case. I have given 


* The Great Argument, p. 339. 


24. DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


you only a specimen of the Messianic predictions, It 
would require not one discourse, but a whole course of 
lectures, to go over them all; but I have brought out 
sufficient to form the basis for the argument which I 
proceed now to construct. 

I want a satisfactory explanation for the converging of 
so many prophecies upon Christ and their fulfilment in 
Him. You need not speak to me here of human fore- 
sight. That might account for the warning given by a 
deep thinker of some danger that lies in the near future, 
but it is ridiculous to name it in this connection. It 
might explain, for example, De Tocqueville’s forecast of 
our civil war, but it will furnish no satisfactory cause 
for such things as I have set before you now. 

Equally idle here is it to speak of accident or mere 
coincidence. There might be some ground for believing 
that the fulfilment of a prediction is accidental if it stood 
alone and by itself, an exception in the history of an 
individual ; but when we have so many predictions all 
pointing to one person and verified in him, no man with 
any candor will account for such a thing by mere coinci- 
dence. In scientific investigations, when we have a case 
like this, the philosopher, no matter what may be his 
creed, sees some design in the converging of so many 
lines toward one point, and asks, in spite of himself, 
What is the purpose of all this? What end is it meant 
toserve ? Andinthat way he arrives at some of his most 
important discoveries. When we look upon a modern 
map and observe a great many railroads from different 
directions approaching to and centring in one point, we 
immediately infer that the design of them all is to reach 
some important city that is situated at that point ; and 
the same principle will lead us infallibly to the conclu- 
sion here that these predictions were intended to furnish 


THE ARGUMENT FROM MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. 25 


the means for the perfect identification of the Messiah 
promised to the Fathers when He should appear among 
men. 

Still less can we talk here of these fulfilments having 
been brought about by collusion. Those concerned in 
the matter were working, for the most part, in igno- 
rance. They knew not what they did; and yet, while 
acting with perfect freedom, they verified all that had 
been written hundreds of years before. The. only 
hypothesis that will meet the case is that the prophets 
spoke under the guidance of God, and as directed by His 
foreknowledge. No doubt we are met here with the 
objection that this is a form of miracle, and that the 
supernatural, in any form, is impossible. But to that 
we may answer, in the words of Dean Payne Smith, that 
‘‘the prophecies contained in the Old Testament are so 
numerous, so consentient one with another, and yet so 
contrary to the whole tenor of Jewish thought, so mar- 
vellously fulfilled in Christianity, and yet in a way so 
different from every anticipated fulfilment, that while it 
is unscientific to refuse to listen to the proof of their 
reality, because of any @ priori supposition, it 1s even 
worse than folly to speak of them as mere forecasts and 
anticipations.’’* 

Here are two classes of facts. On the one hand, the 
predictions hundreds of years before the events ; on the 
other, the events thoroughly fulfilling the predictions. 
Neither of these can be got rid of. They must be 
accepted as facts. Now, the great principle of the in- 
ductive philosophy is that nothing which claims to rest 
on actual fact is to be rejected without examination ; and 
it is an axiom in science that nothing shall be accepted 


* See Prophecy a Preparation for Christ. Pref. pp. xv., xvi. 


26 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


as a cause which is not adequate to produce the effect 
that is attributed to it. By these we stand as strongly 
as any man of science among them all, and when these are 
applied to the facts which I have now brought before 
you, I feel persuaded that every unprejudiced inquirer 
will be led to the admission that God is in these ancient 
Scriptures, and that the prophets spoke and wrote as 
they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 


Further, these facts prove that God is in history. 


Men in working out their own designs are yet only ful- 
filling His purposes. We cannot tell how this is accom- 
plished without doing violence to their free agency ; but 
we see that it is really so, and are prepared to assent to 
Peter’s words, ‘‘ Him being delivered by the determi- 
nate counsel and foreknowledge of God ye have taken 
and by wicked hands have crucified and slain.”’ 

Finally, we are warranted from these facts to conclude 
that God is in Christ. Be sure that in believing on 
Jesus you are following no cunningly devised fable, but 
are becoming the disciples of Him to whom God has 
pointed by the finger of Moses, and David, and Micah, 
and Isaiah, and Jeremiah, and Daniel, as well as by that 
of John the Baptist, saying, ‘‘ Behold the Lamb of God 
which taketh away the sin of the world.”? In building 
on this foundation you are not laying stones on a quick- 
sand, in which they disappear as soon as you have placed 
them, but you are setting them upon the Rock of Ages. 
In venturing on this bridge you are not trusting yourself 
to a tiny plank which will break beneath your weight, 
but you are treading on a structure stable as the throne 
of God itself. ‘God was in Christ reconciling the 
world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto 
them.’’ If Christ is not certainly the Son of God, then 
there is no certainty. If this is not proof that He is the 


THE ARGUMENT FROM MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. 27 


Author of eternal salvation to all them that obey Him, 
then all proof is impossible. I repeat, therefore, with a 
firmer emphasis than ever, the precious words, ‘“¢ This is a 
faithful saying and worthy of all acceptation, that Christ 
Jesus came into the world to save sinners.’’? But as L 
think of old Jerusalem, and see the Roman eagles shin- 
ing in the lurid light of the conflagration by which its 
temple was consumed, I am constrained to add, ‘‘ Be- 
cause of unbelief they were broken off and thou standest 
by faith. Be not high-minded, but fear ; for if God 
spared not the natural branches, take heed lest He spare 
not thee.” 


LECTURE IL. 


The Philosophy of Religion Considered as Pointing 
Toward a Dwine Redeemer of Men. 


BY REV. CARROLL CUTTER, D.D., PRESIDENT OF WESTERN 
RESERVE COLLEGE, CLEVELAND, OHIO, 


Tue subject of my lecture to-night is, The Philosophy 
of Lfreligion Considered as Pointing toward a Divine 
ftedeemer of Men. I propose to show what I under- 
stand by religion, by the philosophy of religion, what 
the outlines of such a philosophy are, and how it points 
to a divine Redeemer of men. 

This is obviously a large field, which presents many 
deep problems for discussion, rather than topics for pop- 
ular discourse. But the substantial facts and relations 
may be presented in a plain way, without complicated 
criticism and refutation of other views, so that even the 
common mind may grasp them without being lost in 
doubts and hard questions. 

Religion is such a common fact in our experience and 
observation that we scarcely think of defining it for our- 
selves or others. We point to the exercises of it which 
we daily see in a Christian community, and attempt no 
farther determination of its nature. When we see vari- 
ous forms of religion differing from each other and from 
our own in creed, life, and worship, some are apt to 
refer them all without inquiry, as perversions or diseases 
of the soul, to the class of superstitions unworthy of 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 29 


respect or study. Others of a more sceptical mind are 
inclined to rank Christianity with the rest, as only a less 
baneful and irrational superstition, destined to pass away 
in its turn, as fetichism, the worship of animals or of 
nature, as Greek polytheism, has passed away. The 
great number and variety of religions is often made the 
ground for rejecting all religion as a product of vain 
fears and baseless theories. If there be therefore a true, 
real, and well-grounded religion, having substantial and 
permanent causes in the soul of man,—if there is a real 
fitting object toward whom these activities go out,—if the 
nature and situation of man and the nature of the object 
of religion demand its exercise, then by defining what 
religion essentially is, pointing out these permanent 
eauses, showing the reality of the object and our rela- 
tions to it, we shall do something to defend and establish 
it ; because we thus give a rational account and intellect- 
ual justification of it ; we give a philosophy of religion. 
If we show that religion thus defined and accounted for 
requires a divine Mediator and Redeemer, we shall do 
something to defend and establish the Christian system. 

There have been many attempts to give a brief and 
comprehensive definition of religion in a single sentence. 
Examples of these are the following: ‘‘ Religion is the 
observance of the moral law as a divine institution ;” it 
is-‘¢ faith in the moral order of the universe ;” ‘‘ the 
union of the finite with the infinite ;” ‘‘ the union of 
God with man;’’ ‘‘ faith founded on feeling in the 
reality of the ideal ;’’ ‘‘ the recognition of our duties as 
divine commands ;” ‘‘ conscious participation in the 
highest reason ;’’ ‘‘ the feeling of absolute dependence.” 

Such vague, abstract, or metaphysical phrases may 
suggest to the imaginative particular aspects of religion, 
but they can convey no definite conception of any sub- 


30 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


ject, much less of that great concrete reality which so 
absorbs and controls all human life, and which we call 
religion. 

Dr. Whewell defines religion as ‘‘a man’s belief 
respecting God and His government of men.” This 
gives religion wholly an intellectual character. Belief 
concerning these things is certainly involved in religion, 
or constitutes one element of it, but not the whole. If 
a man’s belief on the question whether God is, and 
whether He exercises any government over men, should 
happen to be that there is no God and no divine govern- 
ment, that would not be religion. Bretschneider has 
said, with more correctness, ‘‘ Religion is faith in the 
reality of God, with a state of mind and mode of life in 
accordance with that faith.’? Professor W. D. Whitney 
defines more at length by saying that ‘‘ Religion is a 
belief in a superhuman being or beings whose actions 
are seen in the works of creation, and in such rela- 
tions on the part of man toward this being or beings 
as prompt the believer to acts of propitiation and wor- 
ship, and to the regulation of conduct. It is a philoso- 
phy with the application to human interests added, and 
not only added, but made the prominent consideration.” 

The Westminster Review (April, 1881, p. 194) says 
that, ‘‘in all acts or states of religion two characteristic 
features are invariably present: First, an emotion in the 
mind of the devotee, manifested with more or less in- 
tensity in the form of reverence, awe, and dependence ; 
second, this state of feeling as related in some form or 
other to a supernatural being or power. The former is 
the product of our emotional, the latter of our intellect- 
ual, nature.” 

The defects of the latter two definitions will appear in 
the sequel, but they are far superior to those briefer 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 31 


ones. Religion is a hard thing to define adequately, 
‘because it is so comprehensive,—in logical language, 
becanse it has so many essential marks. Any proper 
conception of it must be as broad as the nature and life 
of man, and must have reference to a real being outside 
and independent of man, which is its proper object. It 
we look at it as we experience it ourselves, or as it is 
reported by others who have had a deep experience of it, 
we find that it includes knowledge and feeling, choice 
and action,—that is, it includes the whole of man ; all 
his powers and activities have a part in it. If any of 
these elements is absent, or defective, or perverted in its 
action, the religion is either changed into a superstition, 
or loses its full and proper nature. It is something 
which takes the place of religion or a diseased and dis- 
ordered exhibition of it ; not religion in proper propor- 
tions and balance of its elements. 

If we should attempt to define religion so broadly—that 
is, by so few marks—as to bring under the definition all 
its perversions and defective types, all those things 
which have ever taken the place of religion, we could 
give only the fewest qualities, and must leave out many 
essential elements of real and true religion. The more 
correct method would be to define the true, real, and 
full conception, and then, if need be, point out the de- 
fects by which other things fall short of this conception, 
even though they may practically take the place of 
religion. 

When we speak of a philosophy of religion, we 
properly mean religion as a psychological activity and a 
psychological product. If we speak of it as an outward 
form or exercise, as a performance or ceremony, it is a 
perversion of language. Performances are a mere husk, 
and of no account except as an expression of a psycho- 


32 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


logical activity. But religion as a psychological activity 
and a psychological product can have no occasion and no 
existence except with reference to an object, which must 
be, or be conceived, as a superhuman being, and, in the 
strict sense, as a supernatural being. It must be super- 
human in such a sense as to have power over man ; it 
must be above, superior to man. It must be supernat- 
ural in the sense that it has power over the mind and 
soul of man as no other man and no material thing as 
such, has, even though it should be itself a material 
thing, as the sun, the ocean, fire, some force of nature, 
or a mere idol of wood or stone. It is not common 
matter or common material force. It has, by some 
means Which the believer may not understand, become 
separated and lifted out of the class of ordinary material 
things. Perhaps the thought may not rest, or intend to 
rest, in the material thing at all, but that may be consid- 
ered merely as the representative embodiment or sug- 
gester of an unseen power which is served and wor- 
shipped. And even if the thought does rest in the 
material thing, it does not rest in it merely as material ; 
for then all material things alike would be gods; but as 
distinguished in some way, however dimly the way may 
be apprehended, from all other material things, so that 
this has some special power and right over the man 
which cannot be set aside or successfully opposed. 

Religion, then, implies, first, knowledge of a Being 
who is to be served and worshipped,—knowledge of a 
God who is so far above us and in such relations to us as 
to have power and right over us. By some means or 
other all men have some conception of such a Being or 
beings, and belief in them, and that they stand in such 
plaiots to the gods. 

Second. If there are conceived to be such arrsie 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 5 


beings or such a Being, it must also be conceived that 
there are certain feelings due to him, corresponding to 
his nature and our relations to him. If he has a power 
over us, we must inquire how we can render him such 
service as will satisfy him ; if he has also a right over 
us, we must cherish and express awe, reverence, duty, 
and submission. If we should have besides a high con- 
ception of God’s wisdom and goodness, of the benefi- 
eence of His dealings with us, that calls for love and 
gratitude. Whatever perfections we might discover in 
the Deity would call for special feelings. These are 
religious feelings, and their fulness, as well as their pre- 
cise character, will depend on the knowledge or belief 
which prepares the way for them, as feeling always 
depends on knowledge and on the degree and kind of 
contemplation of the object. 

Third. If there is such a Being, with power and right 
over us, with wisdom and goodness, his will, if we can 
learn it in any way whatever, must govern our choices 
and be the law for our actions. Our view of God’s 
character and attributes will determine whether we can 
obey His law with a high, generous principle and pur- 
pose, or whether we shall obey with a cringing, slavish, 
ignoble spirit. 

If we look over the religions of the world, I think we 
shall find these three elements present in them all,—per- 
haps varying much in degree and with many strange and 
deadly errors in thought and exhibition. 

Now, reducing these explanations to the form of a 
definition, 1 would say that religion is a knowledge or 
belief of some supernatural Being with power and right. 
over men, together with the exercise toward him, or 
toward one another in obedience to him, of feelings, 
choices, and actions corresponding to the character of 

/ 


34 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


that Being, and our relations to him and to one 
another. 

It is now plain that religion, if this be a correct defini- 
tion, is not the exercise nor the product of any one 
faculty of the soul; it is an exercise of the whole soul, 
of the whole man, and it embraces all the activities of 
the man. It does not differ in kind from other activi- 
ties. It is knowing, willing, feeling, acting. It hasa 
special object of knowledge ; the feelings, choices, and 
actions correspond to the object and the relations. The 
chief difference between religions will grow out of the 
view which their votaries take of the divinity, whether 
there be one or more gods, what the character of the 
god is conceived to be and his relations to men. 

Now, such a fact or series of facts as this definition of 
religion implies is found universally among men in some 
form or other. There is everywhere belief in supernat- 
ural beings. The attempt to prove that there are tribes 
of atheists is a failure. There is everywhere worship of 
gods, often degraded and degrading, but some service 
rendered, some ceremony performed, some thoughts, 
feelings, purposes, cherished, as due to the gods or 
required by them. There is everywhere conduct toward 
fellow-men supposed to be required by the gods. Relig- 
ion may not be anywhere all-controlling. We confess 
that even our own exalted religion has far too little inilu- 
ence over us; but reason tells us, and we acknowledge, 
that it ought to control us wholly. A philosophy of this 
series of religious facts would consist in accounting for 
them—that is, in pointing out their causes, and in show- 
ing how the facts are intellectually justified from the 
nature and situation of man. 


The philosophy of religion must rest, first of all, in 


——— 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 35 


the facts of psychology—that is, in the nature of the 
human soul, where we must seek the causes. If we find 
religion everywhere, man must be essentially a religious 
being in his very construction. It rests, in the second 
place, in the reality of an object of religion known to 
man. Our reasoned certainty that there is such an object 
known to us rests largely in metaphysics—the meta- 
physies of knowledge, the metaphysics of the substantial 
world, the metaphysics of ethics. 

We must first inquire what are the causes of religion 
in the constitution of the human soul. [First of all, 
there is the fact that man ts an intelligent beg. As 
such he cannot shake off the belief that there is some great 
superior power controlling the world. I am not speak- 
ing of philosophers consciously reasoning to prove that 
there is a God ; but all men with the most casual thought 
see too much intelligence in things, too much harmony, 
order, regularity, law, too much plan, too much rich and 
varied beauty in things, too much in their own lives 
above their control and yet evidently ordered, to permit 
the idea in their minds that chance or blind force is 
supreme. Even the lowest are prone to project some 
magnified image of their own personality over all things. 
There have been a few men, we must admit, who have 
professedly laid aside this belief in a God, who have set 
up the theory, the speculative opinion, that there is no 
God ; but no man can work theism as an active practical 
force out of his soul. It is presented to our minds, it is 
urged upon us, from so many sources and in so many 
ways, it strikes our nature on so many sides, that we 
cannot practically resist it, even while we speculatively 
deny it. A natural theism in the soul, forming the 
basis of all its activities, will break out to control the 
life, to make it harmonious and beautiful if accepted, or 


36 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


to shatter and torture it if rejected. I am not now 
justifying this deep thought and fixed belief, but only 
calling attention to it as a fact. And I maintain that 
this natural belief in gods in some form or other shows 
that man, as intelligent, is essentially a religious being, 
however ignorant and degraded he may become. He 
always finds some object whom he thinks he ought to 
worship, whom he wd/ worship and serve. 

Second, there is the fact that men are moral beings. 
They have a conscience, a sense of duty, of obligation, 
of law, of right and wrong, and an intellectnal percep- 
tion of the same. All men know and feel that there are 
some things which they ought to choose and do, and 
others which they ought to reject and avoid. We find 
the most various and strange views of what in particular 
we ought to do and what to avoid, the most marvellous 
contradictions ; but the strangeness and variousness of 
these views does not diminish the proof that man is 
essentially a moral being. They rather increase this 
proof, since they show that the moral is deep and strong 
enough to break through every crust of ignorance, error, 
and wickedness even, and to assert itself against the 
greatest and most varied obstacles. Man did not create 
this feeling of duty ; he cannot eradicate it or lay it 
aside. He may dull, impair, or pervert it, just as he 
may any other faculty. ‘‘It does not wy to be 
consulted or advised with ;’’? it does not come out of 
education or religion ; is not dependent on any opinions 
concerning our origin or destiny. It springs up spon- 
taneously, ‘and asserts itself magisterially.’’ It carries 
with it a dread of the consequences of wrong-doing. 
Wrong-doing creates fear, right-doing creates peace of 
mind and a sense of safety. 

This moral element in the human soul is a powerful 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. ot 


cause of religion, No other animal has it, and there is 
no sign that any other inhabitant of this earth 1s a relig- 
ious being. 

This sense of duty causes religion in two ways: First, 
because, intellectually considered, it implies that there is 
a God over us: a Lawgiver, a Ruler, a Judge. I do 
not speak of the philosopher who speculates on the 
meaning of such things ; but the common man, the dull 
and degraded man, though he may frame no theory, 
inarticulately feels that the implanted law itself declares 
that there is a Lawgiver, the necessary correlate of the 
law. Second, because we are thus brought into vital 
relations with the superior power which, on other and 
merely intellectual grounds, we believe to exist. This 
ever-active moral principle brings us into relations of 
accountability and responsibility toward God. We are 
to be judged for our conduct, and we cannot shake off 
this thought and feeling. These relations with a supe- 
rior lawgiver are permanent, delicate, and sensitive. It 
makes a great difference, we feel, how we conduct our- 
selves, which side of the dividing line between good and 
evil we are on. This hope and fear, connected with the 
sense of duty, do not stop with our earthly life; they 
reach out into another life ; they carry immortality with 
them ; they carry rewards and punishments with them ; 
they are rewards and punishments begun here, and they 
anticipate a personal and final decision upon conduct by 
a righteous and authoritative Judge. 

I cannot attempt to bring out all that this ethical ele- 
ment in the soul implies. It carries with it a great deal 
philosophically, in the way of proving that there is a 
God ; in the way of giving reality and present force to 
the doctrine, and in showing what God is; in the way 
of showing what human nature is as a whole, what 


38 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


human life is in its unity and purpose, what this world is 
in its structure, laws, order, and beauty, as a theatre for 
man ; as well as in the way of showing more specifically 
man’s relations to God and what his religious life must 
be. In all these respects this ethical element is, intel- 
lectually considered, a ground of religion which can 
never be shaken, and practically it 1s the most powerful 
cause of religious feeling and action. It is such a power- - 
ful practical cause of religion that even if the intellect is \ 
uncultivated and incapable of forming correct speculative 
views of the world, or if for any reason the mind has 
gone away into confusion and error, this ethical element 
will work out some form of religion. This is the prime 
characteristic of the ethical in man, that it makes him 
religious independently of speculative views, of any rea- 
soned doctrine that there is a God and another life. It 
is an irresistible religious force within every human soul. 
Many seem to suppose that the proper sphere of ethics is 
only to regulate our social life among men. That is the 
least part of ethics, and that is not for social, civil, and 
temporal ends alone, or chiefly; it is for disciplinary 
ends with reference to God and another life ; it is for 
religious ends. The deep, inarticulate feeling that this 
is its real meaning and force is seen in the fact that it 
always comes out in some form of religion. 

The third thing which makes man essentially a relig- 
ious being is the feeling of dependence and limitation. 
We are never suflicient for ourselves ; we always feel the 
need of support, and are conscious of our ignorance and 
helplessness in every crisis of life. We come into the 
world without our own choice, we know not whence ; 
we are kept in life often without any wisdom of our 
own, or when our own wisdom would destroy us; the 
most trifling accidents shape our destiny without any 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 39 


foresight on our part ; we cannot escape the control of 
fixed laws of life, nor the toils of what seem mere chance 
circumstances ; we are helpless and alone in death ; we 
go out into the blank unknown never to return. The 
stoutest man feels his weakness, his need of help, his 
dependence in these physical things. 

There is a sense of moral dependence, of uncertainty, 
of timidity before the moral forces of the world, a felt 
need of guidance, instruction, and help, as to what is 
duty and right, how we shall place ourselves in harmony 
with the moral law and the moral forces of the universe. 

This sense of dependence does not have reference 
merely to our fellow-men and the material world about 
us. They do not give a satisfying support. They are 
not self-sufficient nor sufficient for us. This solid earth, 
this grand cosmos, is finite and dependent ; it has its 
being and support in something beyond itself. So the 
family, the community, the state, as social and civil 
bodies, are all dependent, subordinate, unsatisfying. 
They point to and rest in the controlling ethical forces of 
the universe, and these in turn carry us on to a supreme 
ethical author and supporter acting for ethical ends. 
The dependent physical and moral world alike refer us 
to God as the only adequate, satisfying support. We 
are thus brought into conscious practical relations with 
God which we cannot evade or lay aside the thought of, 
and that without any conscious reasoning or speculation 
on our part. We are inwardly practically impelled to 
reach out beyond the fleeting, failing forms of things to 
the permanent, unchanging supporter of them all. Our 
very souls push us into relations with God and make us 
recognize these relations through their conscious weak- 
ness. 

The fourth element in the soul which causes religion is 


40 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


what I may perhaps eall the obverse of the last, the belief 
in the boundless and unlimited, the sense of our limita- 
tion or relations to the unlimited, the struggle to escape 
bounds and dependence. Man is a limited, finite, and 
dependent being, but he is not contentedly and passively 
dependent like the brutes. He is deeply conscious of his 
dependence just because he is ever reaching out beyond 
it, longing and striving to break out of his limits, to lay 
hold on the infinite and independent, to associate with 
and share in the infinite, the boundless, the perfect, the 
self-sufficient. Weights hold him down when he strives 
to soar, but he strives none the less. He distinguishes 
himself, his permanent and abiding self, from all his 
particular acts, feelings, impulses; from all that is low 
and holds him to low and temporary things, and asserts 
his superiority to them ; he feels himself humiliated and 
kept below his native privilege by them. Thus every 
soul is carried out toward God, not in the way of reason- 
ing and conscious, deliberate search, but in the way of 
native tendency. The impulse may be blind and vague, 
may lead to untold errors and follies, but it is real and 
active, and is satisfied only when the soul is united with 
God, when it is lifted by the Infinite One into some 
conscious union with itself. 

A fifth cause of religion in the soul is the affections, 
the tendeney to love something, and the longing to be 
joved. The soul goes out in love toward other persons 
—parents, friends, neighbors. But none of our fellow- 
men satisfy us; they have too many faults and defects, 
too much selfishness; they are too little responsive. 
Inven if their whole souls should come back to us in 
reply, it is too little to meet our longing. <A great heart, 
reaching ont toward the infinite, cannot be satisfied with 
a petty, narrow, unresponsive, self-absorbed, inapprecia- 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 41 


tive object. Gold cannot satisfy the affections of the 
meanest heart ; a pet animal cannot. A human friend 
is better ; but no human being is free from faults, from 
selfishness and self-absorption ; none is sufficiently cog- 
nizant of us or responsive to us. A mother’s love is the 
most perfect of human loves, because it is least selfish, 
most appreciative and responsive ; but that does not 
equal what we desire in the way of object and of return. 
Parents die, and their affection ceases; they are never 
perfect while they live. 

The soul longs for a friend who knows it altogether, 
who can supplement its weakness and limitation and 
respond completely to its boundless longings, who is the 
opposite of selfishness, fault, and defect, who is perfec- 
tion before its thought and adequate altogether for us. 
These affections thus lift us above and carry us out from 
the finite and imperfect; they bring us into relations 
with the infinite and the perfect. This longing for love 
and sympathy, uniting with the sense of dependence and 
weakness, must, if it is ever satisfied, bring us into such 
relations with God as a child has toward a parent, into 
filial relations, must bring us to Him with the ery, Our 
Father. | 

There is yet one more cause for religion in the human 
soul—the sense of moral defect and moral guilt. The 
mere sense of dependence and limitation, joined with a 
natural aspiration and longing after the boundless, tends 
to make us seek for a supply of natural defect, to lean 
and trust in our weakness, while we reach out and strug- 
gle upward toward the complete and unlimited. But in 
this there is no shame and self-reproach—simply natural 
need seeking natural support. But moral defect and 
wrong bring self-criticism, self-conflict, fear before one’s 
self, before every moral being in the universe. This 


42 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


inward agitation drives the soul to seek relief some- 
where. It cannot relieve itself, for it accuses itself. It 
wants relief from self-accusation, and must seek it with- 
out itself. This agitated search for moral succor from 
self-accusation—how it has driven men hither and thither 
for rescue! and then the thought that all the moral 
goodness of the universe is hostile to our sin raises the 
distress to such a pitch often as to dim the sight and 
confound the search. Then arise superstitions and all 
strange and evil forms of religion ; then begins the effort 
to deny and break away from God and duty, to live in 
self-indulgence and self-will. 

I have now mentioned six elements in the nature of 
man which make him a religious being and prove him to 
be such. Every one of these, except the last, is an 
original and essential element of the human soul, and 
the last is universally present. These elements may 
vary in proportion, may be perverted, confused, or kept 
down in a low and undeveloped state, but not one of 
them can be eradicated. A man may deny all the 
creeds, reject prayer and worship, discard duty and love, 
assert his moral perfection, his independence and self- 
sufficiency—may do all these things in words, but he 
cannot wash out the religious color and fibre of his own 
soul, nor entirely banish the thought of God, the object 
of religion, nor do away with the sense of his relations 
to God. 

The first step toward a philosophy of religion is taken 
when a sufficient and permanent cause for it has been 
pointed out. 


But is there an adequate object toward which these 
essential tendencies of the human soul may go out, in 
which they may find the supply they need ? If there is, 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 43 


religion will be justified. If the soul can really find the 
real God in whom it believes, the author of the moral 
law, the adequate supporter of its being and guide of 
its life, who is able to lift it out of its weakness in this 
transitory state into the sphere of the permanent and the 
perfect—able to take away the stain of its sin, the biting 
of self-accusation, a sufficient object for its out-reaching 
affections, then all the conditions of a full, satisfying, 
ennobling religion are fulfilled ; the religious subject has 
found its object. 

The so-called proofs for the being of God have little 
convincing power measured strictly by logic, and prac- 
tically they are not the real grounds of theistic convictions 
and actions. How could any one conceive it possible to 
give a logical proof of that which is the ground of all 
proof and of all existence? We cannot deduce the first 
being and the first cause from something higher in the 
scale of being and of thought. All that logic can do is 
to show that the existence of God must be assumed to 
account for things and for our thoughts about things— 
that otherwise thought is left with no firm basis and 
being is unsupported. Speaking of proofs in this sense, 
could there be a better proof that God exists than these 
outgoings of the human soul after God always and every- 
where? They require as their counterpart the truth that 
God is and that He is near, accessible to every one of 
us. The human mind cannot accept the statement that 
the only rational, ethical being on earth has a constitu- 
tion wholly out of harmony with reality, wholly mal- 
adapted to the objective facts of the universe. If adap- 
tation is the law of thought and the law of things, the 
religious nature of man proves that God exists, or must 
be assumed to exist. God is the only interpretation of 
these facts and their necessary objective correlate. 


44 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


In a precisely similar way we declare, and the human 
mind accepts the statement, that the contingent and con- 
ditioned world in which we live, this series of limited 
causes and finite events, requires us to assume as its 
ground, author, and first beginning, an independent — 
and unconditioned Being, a first cause of all. We do 
not prove by any deductive process that there is a great 
first. cause, but that our thought demands for its own 
satisfaction that we assume a first cause as a starting- 
point of all beginnings and of all changes. First cause 
is not a logical consequence, but is found to be a neces- 
sary logical antecedent to our reasonings in the sphere of 
causes. 

In like manner, also, when we find the world of mind 
and the world of matter full of adaptations, the most 
wonderful, curious, artful adaptations, in the very ele- 
ments out of which things are formed, of part to part in 
each thing, of each to the other, of structure to func- 
tion, of all to environment, of environment to all, of 
mind to matter, of matter to mind, we ask, What does 
this universal harmony and fitness of things imply ? 
What does it point to? What must we assume to 
explain it? How can it be accounted for? No other 
answer is possible than that a mind existed before it and 
made all with wise forethought. We have not proved 
that the first cause of all things is rational and has a will, 
but we show that we must assume that a rational, choos- 
ing first cause antedated both the elements and the struc- 
tures of this present world, a being with a purpose and a 
character. 

That famous argument from the idea of an infinite and 
perfect being in the mind to the reality of such a being, 
is really only an attempt to account for the idea by 
assuming God as its only adequate cause. : 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 45 


The moral law in the soul, unconditional in its de- 
mands against all opposing desires and impulses, and 
even against the will, implies that there is a personal 
moral governor over us to whom we must give account. 
We cannot otherwise explain the existence of such a 
moral law. | 

Every attempt to prove that God exists results in 
showing that we must assume that He exists. We find 
that the fountain of all being and of all truth is this 
necessary preconception of the mind in knowing. And 
this is the proper meaning of the saying that the idea of 
God is an a priort idea, an innate truth. This first 
truth includes the three elements, that there is a 
rational, ethical first cause, a personal creator of all 
things, a moral governor and judge of men. 

This assumption, forced upon us from so many quar- 
ters in so many forms, secures for the reasoner the second 
element in the construction of a philosophy of religion— 
the religious subject has found the object of religion—a 
divine person who is not far from every one of us. 


We need not spend time in showing that the nature 
and situation of man demand the exercise of religion. 
Every religious element in the human soul is constantly 
self-operative to this end ; it goes out normally or in 
some perverted way toward a superhuman being, and 
finds no satisfaction short of God, the infinite and 
eternal moral Creator, Governor, and Judge. These 
religious elements in our nature do not mean that man is 
capable of religion if he wishes it, but that he must be 
religious whether he will or no, just as he must be an 
intelligent and moral being, however degraded and per- 
verted, however much he may abuse and misapply his 
powers. Our situation in a world of vicissitudes, of dis- 


46 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


satisfactions, of terrible defeats and sorrows, of what by 
all human measurement seem unreasonable and cruel 
events, of unrewarded toils and unavenged wrongs, of 
prosperity of the wicked and overthrows of virtue, takes 
away all confidence in men or in earthly powers, makes 
us flee to the higher Power, makes us call for light and 
explanation, for succor and comfort, from the Maker 
and Governor, the Guide and Judge of the world. This 
little life and our earthly wisdom fail and faint before 
such difficulties ; and yet so deeply and instinctively does 
the mind believe in the rationality of things, and these 
difficulties are mingled with such grand systems of 
benevolence and such vast triumphs of righteousness, 
that we cannot believe them wholly unordered and un- 
controlled, without an explanation, a high and wise pur- 
pose. We can seek the explanation only from God, and 
if He does not choose to make our life and destiny plain, 
we can only leave it humbly and trustfully, though 
fearfully, to His control, waiting till His time shall 
come. But the fearful, trembling, chafing, longing 
spirit naturally begs for divine light and consolation, for 
divine strength and support. AJl human errors and 
dark systems of idolatry and wrong, though originating 
in sin, in pride, conceit, and self-will, tell clearly of 
human weakness and need; they are themselves an un- 
conscious, unintelligent outery to God for His pity and 
His succor. 

And, on the other side, if we apprehend aright the 
nature of God, it is such as to require this outgoing of 
human souls after Him. Such proofs as we can get of 
His being and relations to us indicate that He is not 
simply the great Unknown and Unknowable, that He 
has a will and a character, that He has Himself what He 
has implanted in us—ethical thoughts and feelings ; that 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 47 


Ife can appreciate and respond to our ethical appeals ; 
that He requires and takes note of ethical conduct. No 
doubt, if God is Maker and Governor of moral creatures, 
He requires something of them which they can con- 
sciously and intelligently render. In the nature and 
reason of things we ought to render religious homage 
and service to God. 


Have we not now a rational account of how religion 
comes to exist? And is it not intellectually justitied ? 
With these many causes in the soul sending it out toward 
a supernatural Being—these many and deep views of the 
world, of our own being, place, and life in it, which 
compel the mind to believe in God, to trace all its knowl- 
edge and action back to Him as its foundation principle, 
with the relations which we must hold, as moral creat- 
ures, to our moral Author and Governor, what so neces- 
sary, so fit, so reasonable, so just, as worship, prayer, 
praise, trust, obedience, submission, love, service, abso- 
lute devotion? The shortness and pettiness of life, the 
greatness of God and His boundless empire over all that 
is, does not make religion, with its thoughts, feelings, 
and assumed relations, absurd or presumptuous on our 
part ; these things only make religion the more urgent ; 
they make it sublime elevation for man, sublime con- 
descension for God ; but ethically fitting and worthy on 
both sides, if we judge it aright. | 

And this cannot be said to be an ideal representation, 
a mere speculation of unreal things and relations. I have 
based this whole presentation on the well-known facts of 
psychology which are within the experience of us all, 
and on the necessary truths of metaphysics which underlie 
all human thought and action, and they are not subse- 
quent to nor dependent on any theory of our origin or 


48 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


destiny. It is reality that man is a religious being by 
the necessary outgoings of his nature, that God is, and 
we in ethical relations with Him. The thoughts, feel- 
ings and actions which are fitting to our ethical relations 
with God, thoughts, feelings and actions toward God 
and toward His creatures, constitute religion as an active 
exercise. , 


But, after all, is not this an ideal representation in 
another aspect? Is religion so very easy and plain a 
thing practically as it has been made to seem? Can man 
so rise to God without fear? Has he done so freely, 
easily, surely, confidently? Will God come down to 
men s0 without reserve, so approvingly, so satisfiedly ? 
Has the sense of access and intimacy, the pleasing sense 
of acceptance, the consciousness of life according to duty 
and obedience, kept the way clear for divine intercourse, 
for the happy correspondences between heaven and earth, 
which the needs and the natural relations of man indicate 
as proper and desirable? The answer is too plain. But 
how comes it that the reality is not according to the 
simple, plain nature of things? It comes from the fact 
that the natural relations are somehow confounded and 
perverted, that unnatural obstacles have been introduced 
to defeat the inherent purpose and turn aside the obvi- 
ous relations of things. Shall we not say that it is be- 
cause the philosophy of religion in heaven is not a phi- 
losophy which fits the facts of earth to-day ? 

That last element in the nature of man, by virtue of 
which he is a religious being, that sense of moral defect 
and moral guilt, disturbs and confounds the whole nature 
of man and the whole scheme of our natural philosophy. 
Our psychology may declare that moral guilt is not an es- 
sential element of human nature, while all those other 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 49 


factors are. A psychology which seeks to exhibit the 
natural and normal powers of the soul without entering 
into the history of its real actings and considering the 
present actual outcome in daily life may not see that the 
structure of our nature leads to any such necessary results. 
But there it is in fact, moral guilt, in universal fact, and 
a philosophy which ignores it or disregards the special 
practical difficulties which it causes, may be a philosophy 
of religion in heaven where all philosophies are sup- 
planted by glorious intuitions of realities, but it will not 
fit the facts of earth to-day. 

The fact is, the soul is ruffled, disturbed in what we may 
judge its normal workings, by self-criticism, self-conflict, 
self-reproach, a sense of shame and fear before itself and 
before all the moral beings of the universe. We may say, 
theoretically, that the case is still clear for philosophy ; 
for this is only a more pressing need for religion, should 
only drive a man the more to God, who alone can calm, 
rescue, and satisfy him, on whom his all depends—to the 
infinite Maker, Governor, and Judge, who must know 
and appreciate all his weakness. We may well believe 
that those other elements by themselves would work 
simply and easily, according to their nature, to carry the 
soul direct to God as their only proper supply, and that 
God would promptly and of course meet and satisfy it. 
But this element, universal as it is, is in itself unnatural, . 
and brings confusion into the entire working of the rest. 
It makes human nature practically unnatural. It is cen- 
tred in the region of the will, in its blindness and con- 
fusion acting arbitrarily, doing incalculable things, and 
sending confusion and perversion through all the 
powers. Thus our simple psychology is nonplussed be- 
fore the ethical facts of real life. This moral guilt in 
the soul does not make it any less really a religious 


50 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


being, but it does change the whole problem of the phi- 
losophy of religion as a practical problem, and one to be 
solved on a human basis. 

On the other side, all that we know or think of God 
leads us to ascribe to Him every moral perfection ; and 
there are indications enough in this ethical world that He 
is just and will execute judgment. The guilty, fearful 
creature thus stands before the holy God, the religious 
subject before the object of religion with which it feels 
itself in deep moral discord and in a just and awful fear. 
The needy and dependent creature is thus frighted from 
its only supply and support. If our relations with God 
could be shaken off and something else made to take their 
place, perhaps we could relieve us of the difficulty of such 
a situation as we find usin. But that is impossible. As 
God is the fountain of all being, the assumption of all 
thought, so our moral relation to Him is the basis of all 
other relations ; and the ground of all fear is that deep, 
ineradicable fear before God, the Judge of all the earth, 
who we deeply feel must do right. That very right 
which our moral nature knows ought to be and cries out 
for itself, is what we dread above all things. Really, 
therefore, the philosophy of religion for men must turn 
on the critical point of re-establishing the moral harmony 
between sinful zen and a holy God. How can that be 
done? Is not this a point at which all philosophy fails 
and some other light must come than that of inductive 
inquiry and metaphysical principle ? 

We can say that the very fact of moral conflict in a 
soul seems to indicate the possibility of restoration, on the 
human side. A soul ethically dead and gone wholly 
beyond the region of self-reproach and the sense of 
shame,—we do not see how it could be ethically ap- 
proached and laid hold of, how it could ethically respond 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 51 


to any call or offer of help. ‘‘ The principle of amend- 
ment and recovery’’ would seem to be gone. For as sin 
is in the region of moral freedom, so recovery from it 
must lie in the same region of choice, where there is a 
sense of need and where moral movement is possible, or 
can be awakened, toward supply. There may be, there 
seem to be, souls dead in sin past the reach of any recre- 
ating voice that we can use, where we see no conflict, but 
only apparent content in evil thoughts and ways. There 
seem to be many 60 full of conflict between good and evil 
that it is hopeful that they might be reached and rescued 
by a sufficient re-enforcement of the better tendencies. 
But who can say what is possible when we are dealing 
with the unnatural, perverted, and lawless? And how 
deceptive cases prove in practice! Or, rather, how uni- 
formly helpless and hopeless does everything appear to 
experience in the way of human and natural effort. to 
recover men and bring them back to God. And how 
the very notion of God which we to-day seem to be able 
to form is perverted, degraded, destroyed, or made a 
cause of evil instead of good. Besides, who is there left 
with the high and pure truth in divine things and the 
purpose to come to the aid of those struggling better 
tendencies? Where is the man or the institution to 
stretch forth the helping hand even in a small way ? 
We read of no great religious reform set on foot by 
Socrates, great and almost divinely enlightened as he 
seemed to be. We know how quickly his moral ques- 
tioning was silenced, and moral thought went down 
again to a worse level than before ; how there seemed to 
be no better tendencies within the reach of his voice. 
Confucius, with all his moral maxims, left China to ages 
of superstition and idolatry, with no knowledge or ser- 
vice of God, and no philosophy there has been able to 


52 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


lift up the people to righteousness and love. The wise 
maxims of Buddhism have not lifted men out of sin and 
led them to God. We have seen the results of great 
efforts to supply the place of religion and accomplish its 
ends by morality, philosophy, asceticism, art, culture, 
politics, and material comforts. Jf history proves any- 
thing, it shows the inadequacy of all these to calm the 
agitated, accusing mind, to bring it into moral harmony 
with God and with itself, or to supply the place of God. 

On the other side, who can say what God might 
require, even if man could satisfy himself or could lift 
up himself by cultivating his better tendencies? Ethical 
discord within the human soul, we must judge, implies 
discord between God and the soul, decided views on the 
part of God concerning the guilty, a strength of opposi- 
tion to sin and wrong just in proportion to his own moral 
purity and his intelligent understanding of the motives to 
wrong and of the evil effects of wrong. What shall be 
the strenuousness of the divine hostility toward those who 
fill the noblest province of His empire with moral contfu- 
sion, who turn away from all duty and obedience to Him ? 
We cannot calculate it. But if men have such a sense 
of wrong and injury as we daily see, such resentments 
against injustice, falsehood, cruelty, how must a holy 
God look upon them? We cannot say that human 
resentment against wrong grows out of the wrongness of 
human nature itself, and therefore God can have none 
of it. Just the opposite ; that is the sharpest expression 
of all there is of good in human nature. The most 
hopeful thing in fallen man, wicked as he is, is his deep 
hostility to wickedness, his hostility to himself, his in- 
ability to be reconciled with himself on account of his 
own conscious guilt. Te may misjudge unspeakably as 
to what is wrong or the degree of its wrongness. He 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 53 


may be carried away by passion and pride, so as to per- 
suade himself that wrong is right and right wrong, but 
the sense of the distinction remains, however mistaken 
the judgment; and this hostility to conceived iniquity 
tells him that the same sense is on the throne of the uni- 
verse in the Being that cannot err in judgment, be 
swayed by passion, or urged by haste. 

This ethical sense in the human soul, which makes the 
guilty fear himself and his fellows, prophesies deeply 
and awfully concerning God and His judgments at last. 
It contains an abiding threat, a permanent and recog- 
nized presentiment, of what is to be hereafter, of what 
we are finally to expect from a moral ruler when judg- 
ment shall at length be executed. 

Now, how is this ethical presentiment to be forestalled 
and prevented from issuing in fact? By what action 
upon the divine Being, lowering his demands or remov- 
ing the imperativeness of them? So far as we can argue 
from the fitness of things, from the natural relations of 
Creator and creature, of subject and Ruler, from the 
high claims of human nature to personality, to power, 
dignity, mastership in this world, to character and contin- 
uance of being beyond this life, from the power of habits 
and the strengthening of principles by repeated action, 
everything confirms that natural ethical prophecy of the 
soul itself. How can men act on the nature and purpose 
of God to avert that foreseen punishment so manifoldly 
predicted, so universally and deeply apprehended? The 
way is dark. It cannot be safely suggested that God 
may care little about it. We do care ourselves, and He 
surely infinitely more. That is the deep meaning of our 
own care in the case. It may be suggested that God is 
great enough to forgive and sweep away the whole bad 
history of human guilt, to make it at once as though it 


54 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


had not been. But men cannot forgive themselves ; they 
cannot privately look even upon their own secret wrong- 
doing as though it had not been. All other moral beings 
also have an interest in this matter, and a moral judgment 
to utter uponit. Nothing moral can be private and con- 
cealed ; it demands to be, it must be, public and bear 
upon all. It speaks out and proclaims itself. The ethi- 
cal is one and universally the same. It may be silent, 
but it is imperious and permanent. No moral good or 
bad can be private, or be hidden and wiped out unbe- 
known without a moral shock which will upheave the 
whole system. 


Here, then, we find on the one side the soul, with all 
its natural religiousness, its outgoings after God as the 
natural supply of its wants and the completion of itself, 
profoundly accusing itself, at discord with itself, fearing 
every moral being, above all, fearing God as ne embodi- 
ment of all righteousness, ee and goodness, the 
Author of the moral system, the Governor and Judge of 
ail the earth. On the other side we find everywhere a 
reason for this fear, a strenuous, unappeasable moral 
resentment against all conceived wrong. We find the 
divine resentment, most strenuous of all, as God is the 
head and centre of moral beings, all in their measure 
equally interested in truth, rohe and goodness, as He is 
the responsible Manager of an eeiies! system which is 
one and public, and no stronger anywhere than in its 
weakest part. 

Now, how can psychology, with its analysis of the 
powers of the soul, or metaphysics, clearing up to our 
apprehension the underlying reality of all tae and 
all being, or ethics, which tells us how true, deep, and 
real are “the grounds of our moral fear—how can these— 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. 5d 


the elements of the philosophy of religion—how can 
these, I say, bridge this moral chasm for us, give us the 
calm, and peace, and assurance, the oneness with God 
which we need, all that which religion would naturally 
have been without this moral guilt? They only point 
out for us and emphasize the depth and breadth of the 
chasm, the sheer abruptness of its sides, how hopeless 
the attempt to pass it, how unknown and incalculable the 
means required. All that we can discover based in 
natural facts, real principles, and ethical relations, brings 
difficulty only in view of the great fact of moral guilt. 
The philosophy of religion, or religion constructed in its 
causes and justified intellectually from these and from its 
object by the principles of a human philosophy, is at an 
end. Something more is needed beyond this; some- 
thing that we can get no suggestion of from our own life 
and being in this world; something supernatural is 
pointed to as requisite ; something divine in the way of 
supplement and help, if we are not to be altogether 
hopeless and lost in our guilt. 

There seems to be no natural help, no help anywhere, 
unless God Himself, who made us and knows us alto- 
_ gether, shall find some extra-human means to cleanse the 
self-accusing soul, to speak peace to it by harmonizing its 
imperious jarring factions, while preserving truth and 
equity to the apprehension of both sides of it ; unless God 
shall Himself restore harmony between the wrong-doer 
and the accusing moral world which cries out for right 
and truth in the interest. of ethics on which everything 
stands ; unless God shall Himself provide for appeasing 
eternal justice and truth, and His own infinite sense of 
them, so as to save their execution to the satisfaction of 
His own ethical judgment and that of all other ethical 
beings, so as to exalt and make secure the moral system 


56 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


in the free confidence, obedience and esteem of all ; so as 
to cleanse, heal, win, recover to love, trust, and devotion 
the erring and lost. What philosophy can discover, 
show, or even guess at any natural causes able to accom- 
plish or tending to accomplish all this ? 

The philosophy of religion points to something beyond 
itself, to a divine interposition, a divine Reconciler and 
Redeemer, through its own inadequacy to solve the real 
problem, and the clear and increasing necessity it shows 
for a real, practical solution. This problem cannot, 
must not, remain unsolved to the failure and ruin of the 
moral system. We cannot believe in such a failure. It 
would make the universe a failure. But philosophy can 
of itself solve only a hypothetical problem which does 
not exist in fact on this earth, the problem as it would 
have been if there had been no moral guilt. It can 
point out the causes and the need of religion, the object 
and the relations ; but when the greatest ground of need 
is found in the disordered and irreconcilable state of the 
relations—is found to stand as itself the greatest difficulty 
in the way of a supply, to raise an impassable barrier be- 
tween man and God, the subject and the object, to rend 
and distort the needy soulitself, to incapacitate it for any 
natural relief, it points to a divine Redeemer, through the 
great necessity of such a one to rehabilitate the soul 
itself, to harmonize the ethical man with himself and 
with his fellow-creatures, as well as man with God, and 
God with man. What a work to be done in order to 
make that religion which is needed feasible and real ! 
Must it not be a’divine work? Is there any eye to pity, 
any arm able to save, but God’s eye and God’s arm, 
freely pitying, freely saving? And when we look into 
the Scriptures and see the Lord Jesus Christ, whom God 
hath set forth to be the propitiation for the sins of the 


THE PHILOSOPHY OF RELIGION. oe 


whole world, that He might be just and the justifier of 
him that believeth in Jesus—when we see how millions 
have found peace with God through Him, a great peace 
with themselves through His divine cleansing, the peace 
of God, a peace with God, which passeth all understand- 
ing, which the world cannot give nor take away—when 
we see the great reforming power of this good news 
from heaven in all lands, its growing progress carrying 
blessings, overcoming sin and sorrow, renewing the life 
of the lowest and worst tribes, and making them sons of 
God, shall we not say that in the Bible and the atone- 
ment of Christ we have what was needed in fact? The 
philosophy of religion and the history of religions point 
alike to the one great need, and give us a supreme conti- 
dence in that which so fully fills the place which both 
theory and practice show must be filled. 

If we accept this divine Redeemer we have a possible 
full relief from the disorders and unnaturalness of our 
relations to ourselves and to God, a boundless power of 
moral life and growth in our place in this world through 
the peace it gives, a satisfaction in all the trying and 
difficult situations in which we may be placed, a conti- 
dence amid sickness, sorrow, loss, reproach, and death, 
because these seeming evils are all seen in relation to a 
glorious purpose, as parts of a needed training under a 
heavenly Father’s guidance for another immortal life in 
heavenly company ; we see how, by active service and 
by such experiences nobly borne and wisely improved, 
the moral wanderings and inclinations to wander are cor- 
rected ; how moral wholeness may be gradually restored, 
moral integrity rendered secure, moral ripeness gained, 
under God’s gracious provision and help, both toward 
God and toward men. Especially we see how our per- 
sonal relations of obligation to the Redeemer may draw 


58 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


out the finest, purest, sweetest elements of character, 
such as to give a real foretaste of the love and bliss of 
heaven, even here in this life among men. 

With the reconstruction of the moral life of the indi- 
vidual and of society, we shall find that the Bible, with 
its system of truth, is not only a philosophy of religion, 
and the only philosophy of religion for the real life of 
men to-day, but it is also a philosophy of life, a philoso- 
phy of the universe, the final philosophy. 


LECTURE III. 


Jesus Christ, the Unique Reconciler of Contradictories 
in Thought and Character. 


BY REV. SIMON J. McPHERSON, D.D., CHICAGO, ILL. 


Li. 


From the pastor’s standpoint, which must of course be 
the standpoint occupied in the present lecture, the Chris- 
tian evidences need, I think, to be regarded as Christo- 
centric. Systematic theology very probably requires a 
different array and order, but to be practically useful to 
the average man, apologetics, as the next of kin to 
preaching, should put the person, character, and work of 
Jesus conspicuously in the foreground—in front of the 
Bible as a book, and of Christianity as a system. 
Familiar reasons for this method are not, I think, far to 
seek. 

1. It matches with the instinctive cravings of our 
common human nature, and escapes the prejudices of all 
such castes as learning and ignorance, wealth and pov- 
erty, age and youth, climate, tradttion, ‘the spirit of 
the time,’ or other special conditions, may engender. 
For example, it recognizes the fundamental fact that the 
head is subordinate as a motive power to the heart. In- 
tellect may guide and restrain, may analyze and criticise, 
but every great moral movement among men has been 
generated by heart-power. The real motors of life 
spring out of the affections. Faith, hope, love—these 


60 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION O¥ THE FAITH. 


are the uplifting evangels, swaying the will, moulding 
the character, measuring the future. 

Again, this apologetic method rescues us from mere 
abstractions, which are but dust in the éyes and ashes in 
the teeth of those who are conscious, after all, that they 
are dying sinners. Mankind has never yet risen to 
follow a naked idea. Stoicism made fate the god of but 
few. Pantheism can be popular only where matter is 
worshipped as personal. Even Buddhism and Confu- 
cianism are thronged with their idols. The effort to 
personify abstractions merges all false religions at last 
into mythology. Hence we need not, I believe, fear 
the permanent influence upon the masses of men of our 
current agnosticism, for not only is it a philosophy of 
despair and a worship of ignorance as a fetich, but it is 
also incapable of being clothed upon with the conception 
of life. We will, because we can, commit our personal 
destinies only to the keeping of a personal leader, pos- 
sessed of both sympathy and power. ‘The inscrutable 
‘© Somewhat’? can never be human nature’s god ; indeed, 
our Saviour cannot be less than the personal God inear- 
nate. 

9. Moreover, this method appears also to observe the 
natural order of human thought by proceeding from the 
simple to the more complex. Thus, for example, mira- 
cles are a chief stumbling-block to the faith of our day, 
startling spectres which frighten science and philosophy. 
But when the consideration of miracles is approached 
along the line of Chrisi’s nature as that is portrayed in 
the Gospels, forthwith they begin to appear natural. 
For they are then seen as infinitesimal outcroppings of 
the stupendous sphere of His power, wisdom, and love, 
whose bulk lies beyond our horizon, Then the wonder 
will be not that He worked so many miracles, but that 


JESUS CHRIST, THE UNIQUE RECONCILER. 61 


Hie worked so few, and the difficulty will be to conceive 
not of His divinity, but of His humanity. Then the 
studious sinner, whose penitence will hardly permit him 
to tolerate his own exposed character, must feel amazed 
that such a holy, mighty being as Jesus Christ, instead 
of working wonders which were always gracious and 
beneficent (unless the blasting of one fig-tree and the 
drowning of some swine were exceptions) did not tear 
this rebellious world to pieces with indignant finger-tips. 
Again, a frequent method with evidential books is, 
first, to lay down the data of natural religion and argue 
the probability that God would supplement these with a 
revelation and a system of spiritual religion, and then to 
give reasons for believing that the Bible is the expected 
supplement and Christianity the expected spiitrual and 
redemptive system. But as Dr. Monro Gibson once 
said, in this connection, ‘‘ The result is that, at the very 
threshold of revealed religion, the inquirer is confronted 
with a large and complicated and much-debated subject, 
presenting innumerable difficulties which it is easy to 
raise and hard to answer; and he is discouraged and 
repelled at the very outset” (Presbyterian Review, 
April, 1880). The Christo-centric method, on the other 
hand, fixes the attention, from first to last, upon a single 
object, and that not only the vital centre of the whole, 
but also the final solvent of all surrounding difficulties. 
8. Another fact to be decisively urged on behalf of 
this method is that it seems to be the scriptural method. 
The apostles, dealing with a period in many ways similar 
to our own, began with the simple facts of Christ’s 
career. Peter at Pentecost, Paul on Mar’s Hill, content 
to preach Jesus and the resurrection to sceptics as they 
came, left it largely to Papias, Justin Martyr, Ireneeus, 
and other uninspired Fathers to introduce examinate 


62 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


fashions still prevailing in apologetics. As the word 
‘‘ nature” and its synonyms are wanting in the Old Tes- 
tament, which always represents God as immanent in His 
works and personally near to man, so the abstract terms 
current in our modern evidential literature, like ‘* Chris- 
tianity,’’ ‘‘ the Christian religion,’’ even “‘ apologetics” 
itself, are significantly absent from the New Testament, 
which replaces them with some descriptive name of the 
Saviour, or some such personal message as “‘ the Gospel 
of Jesus Christ,’’ or some such definition of vital experi- 
ence as ‘ the faith,’’ or ‘‘ our hope.’’ The Master held 
up His own person as Scania in His teachings as on 
His cross. Meek and lowly as He was, His instructions 
are in one sense pure self-assertion. The distinctive 
word, whose changes he left resounding in the ears of 
the centuries, was I, my, me—‘‘I and my Father,” “I 
am Alpha and nee ‘¢ 1, if I be lifted up, will draw 
all men unto me.’ 

4, A minor advantage of our method is of eine | 
importance perhaps to our age. ‘The Bible as a book, 
Christianity as a system, are fone assaulted on all sides 
with the hammers of destructive criticism ; but the per- 
sonal Jesus is favored—ay, sometimes offensively patron- 
ized by His foes. This present attitude of theirs seems 
to offer a suitable fulerum to our personal method. We 
have already witnessed, for example, the suicide of the 
mythical theory. It could not live, because it confined 
itself to the mere husks and rinds, and rejected the meat, 
of Gospel history. Like the bed and covering described 
by Isaiah, it was both too short and too narrow—too 
short to fit history, too narrow to satisfy the hungry 
hearts of men. It was like an effort to put an artificial 
frame around some glorious sunset in the sky—it framed 
out more than it framed in. Even an unlearned reader 


JESUS CHRIST, THE UNIQUE RECONCILER. 63 


may observe that there is not only a Gospel history, but 
a Gospel portraiture, and a portraiture so marvelously 
drawn by rude men that it lives and breathes again incar- 
nate in the unlearned reader himself until he desires 
nothing beyond it forever and ever. That portraiture is 
infinitely greater not only than its painters, but also than 

all the separate words and acts ascribed even to its sub- 
ject—so great that the best copies of the noblest masters 
jn our own century inevitably miss the charm and power 
of the original Galilean limners. ence, even if you 
could account for the origin of the New Testament 
manuscripts and the propagation of their statements, on 
purely natural grounds, there would still confront you a 
character, unique, inseparable in all elements of its ~ 
totality, the conception of which is food to starving 
souls. As the sun reproduces himself in miniature on 
all the myriad retinas that turn upward to receive him, 
so the Babe of Bethlehem, the Light of the world, is 
formed in myriads of Christians—miniature Christs— 
round the world from age to age. Downward flows the 
unceasing stream of cleansing blood from lofty Calvary 
upon all her outlying foot-hills, the Himalayas, the 
Apennines, these Alleghanies. Joseph of Arimathea’s 
broken tomb is mankind’s open door, the hill of Bethany 
is mankind’s stepping-stone, into that highest heaven 
where the ascended First-born sitteth King forever. 
Men gazing upon this marvellous portraiture of the 
Gospel, find, as in Hawthorne’s fable of the Great Stone 
Face, that even while their eyes are set upon it, uncon- 
sciously they are transformed into its likeness ; and so 
they re-echo Iole’s description of Hercules as given by 
our American Montaigne. ‘‘‘ Oh, Iole, how did you 
know that Hercules was a god?’ ‘ Because,’ answered 
Iole, ‘I was content the moment my eyes rested upon 


64 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


him. When I beheld Theseus, I desired that I might see 
him offer battle, or at least guide his horses in a chariot 
race ; but Hereules did not wait for a contest ; he con- 
quered whether he stood, or walked, or sat, or what- 
ever he did !’”’ . 


II. 


From the pastor’s standpoint, then, as defined in these 
practical reflections, kindly consider now the apologetic 
value of one aspect of our blessed Lord’s character— 
namely, His strange capability to identify opposite types 
in life and to reconcile apparent contradictories in 
thought. This I attempt to show only partially and . 
superficially by means of certain concrete examples. 

1. He was at once a patriot and a cosmopolitan. His 
nationality was intense, like that of His countrymen 
generally. A circumcised Jew, He probably never went 
beyond the bounds of His native land. Tle conceived 
of His personal mission as confined to the lost sheep of 
the house of Israel. So far as it did not conflict with 
the Gospel, He was scrupulous in observing their cere- 
monial rites, in temple or synagogue, on Sabbath and 
feast-day, as prescribed and followed by the authorities 
of his own generation. As that most competent wit- 
ness, Dr. Edersheim, the natural as well as the spiritual 
brother of Jesus, has reminded us, ‘* He spoke first and 
directly to the Jews, and His words must have been 
intelligible to them, His teaching must have reached 
upward from their intellectual and religious standpoint, 
even although it infinitely extended the horizon so as, in 
its full application, to make it wide as the bounds of 
earth and time.’? Yet even as a Hebrew he ever tran- 
scended all existing sects—Pharisees, Sadducees, Essenes 
—beaming superior light downward upon the heads of 


JESUS CHRIST, THE UNIQUE RECONCILER. 65 


them all. He recognized the rights of the tax-collecting 
Cesar, by recognizing first the higher rights of the soul- 
demanding God. His public ministry, like His prepara- 
tory years, was given mostly to Galilee, a middle region 
between His nation and His world, with excursions 
which radiated from the central Jerusalem to the out- 
lying “‘ coasts.”? His gospels are addressed severally to 
the covenanting Hebrew, the achieving Roman, the 
learned Greek, the transformed Christian. He sent His 
apostles first to the Israelites only, but his last commis- 
sion despatched them and us to the world of all nations. 
Thus His abounding life soon burst forever the shell of 
Judaism, and He became the citizen of the world. To- 
day all nations under His heaven hear Him speak their 
own tongues as a native. Mazoomdar claims Him as an 
Oriental, if not as an East Indian. With equal fondness 
we represent Him as a man of the west. He is the 
rising sun of new Japan. Since Livingstone transfused 
his blood into the dull heart of Africa, that dark conti- 
nent has begun to throb with hope. Everywhere He is 
at home. The sole, true cosmopolite, He offers suitable 
models to a thousand different temperaments at once. 
Equally national and universal, His character works the 
mathematical miracle of multiplicity in unity, and at the 
same time both His special and His general relations are 
unconfused and perfect. 

2. As the ideal Son of Man, Jesus Christ seems to me 
the unique summary of all the moral elements of 
humanity in both its masculine and feminine aspects. 
Although our experience may render it difficult for us 
to conceive of such a spherical personage, it must be 
reasonably plain that manhood and womanhood are but 
the twin hemispheres of perfect humanity. Hence, its 
Saviour requires identity of moral nature with each in 


66 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


order fully to sympathize with both. Masculine without 
harshness, feminine without effeminacy, He must have 
unique completeness and symmetry of character. Ie 
must be the transcendant genus which, without mixture 
or want of equipoise, includes the inalienable but com- 
plemental distinctions, and all common qualities to be 
found normally in the two sexes. 

Certainly no one that is familiar with His life can 
doubt that Jesus is ‘“‘the Prince of the kings of the 
earth.’? Mark some characteristic qualities of His man- 
liness. One element of His heroic manhood is seen in 
Tis incomparably great purpose in life. Contrast it with 
those of some of the world’s acknowledged heroes. The 
avowed object of Socrates was to teach men virtue by 
making them wise. But high as that end is, it fails to 
appreciate the supremacy of unselfish love, and it misses 
that highest view which finds in the gracious glory of the 
infinite God the noblest motive and the mightiest means 
to secure human welfare. Take the sublime figure of 
Luther, whose manly courage was perfect. He aimed at 
man’s emancipation from spiritual tyranny. But some- 
times he fought organized tyranny with personal tyranny, 
and his mind was so focussed upon a single part that he 
was blind to a great fraction of the realm of truth. 
Take Washington, who in practical America has been 
retired to the repose of a half mythical greatness in less 
than a century. As Mr. Gladstone has recently re- 
minded us, he undoubtedly deserves the highest places 
among national heroes. But his large and _ patriotic 
purpose was marred with an occasional touch of bad tem- 
per and a somewhat grotesque measure of self-esteem. 
Moreover, his end was largely attained in war, whose 
business is killing, and which hardly affords an oppor- 
tunity for the pursuit of the noblest object. But Jesus’ 


JESUS CHRIST, THE UNIQUE RECONCILER. 67% 


object was to reveal the truth about man’s actual state 
and marvellous capabilities, to find and rescue the vic- 
tims of sin and death, and by means of His own life and 
death of humiliation to harmonize the eternal Father and 
His rebellious children. 

This unapproached purpose was supported by resistless 
power and infleaible determination, without which His 
high aim might have made Him a mere visionary. 
Ordinary kings of men must change their plans to meet 
changing circumstances, and they are usually overthrown 
at last by some despised fault or misfortune—Alexander 
by a debauch, Antony by the smile of a sorceress, Marl- 
borough by penuriousness, Gordon by the weapon of a 
hypocritical friend. But Jesus was born, He lived, 
died, and rose again all for one unchanging purpose. 
Temptations He flung aside as drift- wood is tossed ashore 
by the sea. Circumstances could not thwart Him, bad 
men could not override Him, death itself could not con- 
quer Him; nay, these all entered into His purpose and 
became at last the very means by which He achieved it. 
Then, too, He had the heroism of exquisite courage. 
Where else in history is there so sublime a picture as 
that made by the lofty, godlike form of Pilate’s great 
prisoner? He illustrated that intreped bravery which 
perceives victory through the thickest smoke of desperate 
battle, that wese valor which never strikes an unneces- 
sary nor an unsuccessful blow, that adventurous gal- 
lantry which outstrips every comrade and anticipates 
every foe, that calm and persistent fortitude which 
meets outrageous assaults with an unbroken spirit. 

But with all His large manliness, Jesus Christ pos- 
sessed also the moral traits which are distinctly feminine. 
Te was not only courageous, but gentle and unselfish ; 
Ilis disinterested love and immaculate purity were as real 


68 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


as His truth and power. Practical as well as ideal, He 
could compassionately feed the hungry and at the same 
time graciously teach the wisest questioner and baffle the 
most consummate Pharisee. Always as tender as He 
was determined, this mighty man of war against all the 
kingdoms of sin could doff His helmet to a frightened 
child as winsomely as Homer’s old Greek soldier. 

He had a woman’s sympathy with every kind of suffer- 
ing. His hands dared touch the loathsome lepers, and 
for our sake did not shrink from the cruel nails. He 
had a mother’s affection for little children, for the out- 
east, for the poor. He had a lady’s tact to adapt Him- 
self instantly to every kind of scene, yet so that the 
sinful must either flee from Him or cry from their knees 
for His forgiveness. The doctors’ conference in the 
temple, the baptismal service at the Jordan, the wedding 
in Cana or the feast at Simon the Pharisee’s house, the 
fireside at Bethany, the death-bed of Jairus’ daughter, 
the tomb of Lazarus, the desecrated Temple, the garden 
fertilized by His bloody sweat, the trial pageant in 
Pilate’s judgment-hall—did these scenes find an absence 
of any needed grace or any lack of the etiquette of the 
Golden Rule in His sincere and suitable demeanor? He 
had indeed a sister’s intuitive delicacy of touch, and 
never blundered in dealing with that sex which was 
physically not his own. Indulging neither the fulsome 
flattery nor the haughty patronage of common men, he 
never betrayed the least degree of dull-witted misconcep- 
tion toward any woman—His own mother, the dissimilar 
sisters of Bethany, the ambitious wife of Zebedee, the 
strange woman of Samaria, the Syro-Phcenician intruder 
who would have her self-denying way, the adoring com- 
pany ‘‘ last at His cross and earliest at His grave.” 
Kach heard the suitable word and received the resistless 


a 


JESUS CHRIST, THE UNIQUE RECONCILER. 69 


impulse which seemed to start up out of her own noblest 
aspiration, and which roused her soul to the holiest 
endeavors. Like womankind, too, He was intensely 
eager for human love and sympathy. He was subject to 
His parents in His childhood. ‘‘ He talked by the 
way.’ He drew John to His heart. He had the inner 
trio of disciple friends to witness His loftiest transfigura- 
tion and His deepest agony. Fellowship, not monkish- 
ness, was the law of His majestic life, which He poured 
out like a woman for others. 

Similar things could be said of His teachings ; mascu- 
line as they are, they have also a womanly savor. Had 
He written the Gospels anonymously, both sexes would 
have instinctively claimed the author. Many of His 
utterances might have been written by an inspired 
woman. Read the Beatitudes. Read in the fourteenth 
chapter of John about the serene home in heaven and 
those solaces of the Comforter which sooth the troubled 
as a wise nurse quiets children that are frightened in the 
dark. Read His marvellous last sayings on the cross. 
Then let appreciative sons and brothers say whether the 
vicarious heart of womanhood did not beat and bleed in 
the breast of His mighty manhood. With their mothers 
and sisters in mind, let them say to Christ, ‘‘ Thy gen- 
tleness has made me great.”’ 

It is not strange, therefore, that His career not only 
rendered rivalry between the sexes impossible on Chris- 
tian principles, but also restored the rights and the con- 
- sideration which the stronger had wrested from the 
weaker sex. If Christ has saved men from Satan, He 
has saved women both from Satan and from men. It is 
only natural that women should flock to the standard and 
fill the churches of their one successful champion. Out- 
side of Christendom they are, and they ever have been, 


10 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION ‘OF THE FAITH. 


either debased or ignored. But from the days of the 
Marys, of Elizabeth, of Anna, until now, they have con- 
stantly found in Him that which they needed and 
craved ; and following Him they, equally with men, are 
destined at last to reach that perfect heaven where there 
is ‘‘neither male nor female,’’ ‘* neither marrying nor 
giving in marriage,’’? but where all alike attain to the 
measure of the stature of the fulness of Christ. Let 
silence meditate this strange matter ; if these words are 
true, the person of Jesus Christ is certainly an unique 
conception. 

3. The teaching of our blessed Redeemer seems to 
combine many apparently opposite qualities, A recent 
writer but follows the view of all discerning readers in 
noting that His matter was both popular and profound, 
His style both homely and sublime, His manner ear- 
nest and tactful, faithful and yet kindly, humble but 
most majestic, and [is view-point equally exclusive and 
catholic. The Pharisees, armed cap-a-pie with prece- 
dents and authorities ; the Sadducees, saturated with the 
newest poison of agnostic criticism ; the Herodians, alert 
with that political shrewdness which imperial Rome 
rated at a money valuation, could make nothing of His 
hated doctrines. But the common people heard Him 
gladly ; Pentecost in one instant flashed His deepest 
meaning upon a mixed crowd of three thousand. He 
spoke with strange humility, yet as one having absolute 
authority. Without argument He convinced or silenced ; 
without any parade of arbitrary power He awed and sub- 
dued. His serenest word silenced the technical ecclesi- 
astical lawyer, or awakened the conscience of accusers of 
the guilty; His gentle hand emptied the temple of 
throngs of mercenary usurpers ; His compelling eye pros- 
trated the armed posse of soldiers that came to arrest Him. 


. 
ra] 

a 

© 


JESUS CHRIST, THE UNIQUE RECONCILER. 71 


To an unique degree also His teachings reconcile the 
practical with the ideal in human thought. Now, it is 
a familiar fact that many people who talk much of the 
ideal are but prating visionaries.. It is equally true that 
people who call themselves practical are usually inclined 
to laugh at ideals. They see so vast a chasm between 
the performances and the aspirations of the average man 
that they learn to despise all ideals as the synonyms of 
chimerical impossibilities. But Christ taught nothing, 
commanded nothing, inspired to nothing which He Him- 
self did not first illustrate, and do, and become. That 
the actual and the ideal were identical in Him is easily 
shown by the effect of His teachings in those who follow 
Him. He discourages no beginner, however ignorant, 
weak, and low; He disappoints no achiever, however 
wise, strong, and exalted. ‘‘ My yoke is easy and my 
burden is light,’’ said He to heavy-laden aspirants who 
find failure in themselves with microscopic skill. ‘* Ye 
shall be perfect as your Father in heaven,” said He to 
the satistied egotists who caught their first glimpse of 
His telescopic perspective in the Sermon on the Mount. 
The real and the ideal, like the finite and infinite, are 
thus in Him commensurate. The light of His ideal 
character dawns like that of the sun, which seems to rise 
out of the next hill, yet which, as you study it, is found 
and felt to be ninety millions of miles away. It imme- 
diately warms every smallest germ of the humblest 
worker into life, yet forever leaves the greatest victor 
- something to hope for and to win. 

Another apparent contradictory reconciled in Christ’s 
character and teaching is found in His union of conserva- 
tism and progressiveness, Other teachers, whether in 
politics, science, art, or religion, represent only one of 
these two tendencies; but in Christ, as in nature, the 


42 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


centripetal and the centrifugal forces are balanced. All 
other men seem to have either a mania for the past or a 
contrary mania for the future ; but in Christ alone truth 
is Janus-faced, on one side history, on the other proph- 
ecy, each accurate, real, and influential. ‘‘ I come not,”’ 
says He, ‘‘to destroy, but to fulfil.”’ Therefore He 
opposes both mere destructiveness and mere passiveness, 
and favors both true conservatism and true progress, true 
preservation and true development of life. False con- 
servatism is a victim of the inertia of rest, a phylacteried 
worshipper of the principle, ‘‘ Whatever is, is right,” a 
selfish keeper not of a treasure-house, but of a charnel- 
house. But false radicalism is no better. The patron 
of quackery in science, education, religion, it rushes 
fanatically after every new will-o’-the-wisp, tearing up 
the existing pathway under its feet in order to reach the 
unseen swamp with haste. Since experience is some- 
times misleading, it turns contemptuously to mere ex- 
periment. Because religion contains sacred mystery it 
plunges blindfold into the false and easy refuges of 
unbelief. alse conservatism leaves its dwelling without 
repair until the whole structure rots to the ground ; false 
radicalism burns its house over its own head in order to 
find imaginary treasures in the ashes. False conserva- 
tism is like the survival of the medizeval caricatures of 
Christianity in the old régime of France ; false radical- 
ism blots out the good with the bad, as in the atheistic 
upheaval of the French Revolution. One says, ‘‘ Pre- 
serve established wrongs ;” the other answers, ‘‘ Destroy 
established rights.’? Both, therefore, are antagonistic to 
Christ, who came neither to hoard nor to annihilate, but 
to fulfil. 

It is this Christ who, on the one hand, anchors us to 
the Gibraltar of true conservatism, holding us fast to the 


JESUS CHRIST, THE UNIQUE RECONCILER. 6) 


logic of realities as already ascertained. He “‘ bringeth 
forth out of His treasure things new and old.” He 
encases all His teaching in the history of fact, as written 
in both nature and Scripture. There is hardly a secret 
of force, or law, or life, long secluded by His divine 
conservatism, that He is not now beginning confidentially 
to reveal for beneficent uses to childlike mathematician, 
and physicist, and naturalist. More vital still, the stren- 
uous struggles and pathetic sufferings of the human ages 
are held up in His Bible as object lessons for all modern 
character-builders. Hence Jesus, as authorized inter- 
preter of both, solemnly declares: “‘ Till heaven and 
earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass 
from the law till all be fulfilled.” 

But, on the other hand, He puts at least equal em- 
phasis upon the law of progress. His spirit is not only 
loving and economical, but aggressive and creative. 
Every new age whose features are etched on the bosom 
of old carth was a distinct advance upon its predecessor. 
Character is an evolution beginning with regeneration, 
ending in Christ-likeness. The Bible is a development, 
Christianity being built partly upon, and partly in front 
of, the old site of Judaism. But the object was not to 
demolish the old—it was to erect the new structure. 
The one superseded the other by absorbing and complet- 
ing it. In the Sermon on the Mount He breaks the 
ceremonial shell of Mosaism—‘‘ Ye have heard that it 
hath been said by them of old time’’—in order to reveal 
the kernel of truth and life in the old precepts and com- 
mandments—‘‘ But I say unto you.’’? Je abandons an 
outgrown form to preserve the unchanging spirit of the 
commandments as summed up in love. While setting 
aside their letter, He forever established their spirit, their 
absolute meaning, by revealing their underlying, perhaps 


74 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


hidden, principle. Hence His immediate effort is not, 
as in the case of Adam and Eve, merely to maintain 
character by negative abstinence from forbidden fruit, 
but, as in the case of Enoch, to restore the ruins of 
character by the forgiveness and the fellowship of God. 
His standpoint is not merely that of Sinai, which fiercely 
thunders prohibitions, ‘‘ Thou shalt not, thou shalt,” but 
characteristically that of Calvary, which calmly whis- 
pers, “* Thou shalt ; thou shalt trust, thou shalt hope, 
thou shalt love.”’ | 

We need not. be surprised that Pharisees and Saddu- 
cees, historians and prophets, conservatives and radicals, 
find a new and safe standpoint in Jesus Christ. He has 
uses for both, yet shows to each a more excellent way, 
equally removed from the reactionary and the visionary. 
Of what other character within human knowledge can 
as much be said ? 

4. We ascend to the consideration of a much higher 
antinomy when we approach the contrasted conceptions 
of temptation and sinlessness in Jesus. Theology is not 
now our province, and we should modestly pass by the 
old debate between posse non peccare and non Posse 
peccare. It is enough to insist upon the reality, and if 
possible also upon the realization, of two scriptural 
facts: (1) ‘‘ He was tempted in all points like as we 
are ;’ (2) “‘ yet without sin.’ The reality of temptation 
in the wilderness, in Gethsemane, and all the thorny 
way between is indisputable if the Gospel portraiture be 
accepted—aindisputable, therefore, as a conception. The 
reality of His sinlessness is undoubtedly the divine fact 
which sceptics most commonly admit. It is to me very 
impressive to observe with what unconscious reverence 
the most unfriendly critics usually deal with the moral 
character of Jesus. Practically all those who have 


1 
ee ee ae eee ee ee ee or ee ee! 


ee 


‘ 
ee ee —a 


ae 


re 


JESUS CHRIST, THE UNIQUE RECONCILER. 19 


knowledge of the Gospels perceive that their writers 
have depicted one that ‘‘did no sin.’’ To our age He 
anew extends His challenge : ‘‘ Which of you convicteth 
me of sin?’? Without pausing to develop the immense 
significance of the general agreement on this point, or to 
press home the second part of this challenge, consequent 
upon this admission: ‘f Then why do ye not believe 
me?” let us recall what a marvellous, what an unique 
conception of human experience it is to be thus both 
tempted and sinless. 

Perhaps the difficulty of this familiar twofold concep- 
tion may be brought out a little by an outline picture. 
I find myself standing at the beginning of a long avenue 
that ascends to heaven. In the distance, far as thought 
ean reach, I see Jesus Christ, conspicuous in glorious 
light, looking toward me from a most exalted throne. 
His attitude is full of repose—the repose of conquered 
triumph. His face is illumined with the glow of His 
mighty love, yet as I gaze upon its beauty I can detect 
the tracery of suffering past. His lips are continually 
parted with the sweet stream of divine promises, yet as 
T listen I can detect an undertone of sanctified patience. 
His eyes are strong and gentle with disciplined power 
and mercy. His arms are stretched wide to welcome 
me, but in His open palms I see the scars left by driven 
nails. | | 

Along the very middle of the avenue the dotted line 
of His footprints runs from my position to His throne as 
straight as the arrow flies. Near me these footprints are 
marked obscurely in the dust. Further on they trail 
through ever-deepening mire. Still beyond, under the 
images of a stained cross and a broken tomb, they are 
filled with pools of blood. But thence upward to the 
throne they shine like a stdirway of stars. 


76 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


On one side of this dotted line, perilously close to the 
footprints but suddenly ending at the cross, I see a file 
of stern-faced angels. If I take a short step to the left 
and look along this marshalled column, I discover that 
just in range is the extended palm of Jesus, and around 
the wound-print are the words, ‘‘ Tempted’ in all points 
like as we are.’’ Now I perceive the significance of the 
angel-guard. If at any point He had failed of perfect 
sympathy with struggling souls, the angel there would 
have sounded instantly the death-knell of redemption, 
and Christ would have been forced away from a doomed 
race, a Saviour bankrupted by want of human suscepti- 
bility. One hair’s-breadth to the right of the line of 
footprints I see a row of fathomless pitfalls. In range 
above that dreadful row I see Christ’s left hand out- 
stretched, and on its pierced palm is written, ‘‘ Yet 
without sin.”” Now I know that if He had swerved bya 
thought from the absolutely straight line of sinlessness, 
He would have fallen instantly into the bottomless snare 
of Satan, and His attempt to save sinners would have 
resulted only in making Himself the most stupendous 
wreck of sin in all the ages. 

But between the ever-present Scylla of cold apathy 
and the ever-present Charybdis of threatening sin, our 
Saviour trod the whole way from Bethlehem to Calvary 
without one misstep. 

Could human skill sueceed in depicting such a career 
without having the living model to copy ? 

5. From this height we can catch glimpses of the dis- 
tant culminating antinomy—Jesus Christ, ‘‘ very God of 
very God,” yet ‘‘incarnate by the Holy Ghost of the 
Virgin Mary and . . . made man,” bone of our bone 
and flesh of our flesh. This fact is the summit of script- 
ural mystery. If it be measured by mathematics, it may 


JESUS CHRIST, THE UNIQUE RECONCILER. ve 


seem like an effort to prove that the finite is equal to the 
infinite—to prove that a parabola is one inch in length. 
The metaphysician may call it unthinkable ; the scientist, 
contrary to nature, and therefore impossible. Neverthe- 
less, there stands the living Christ, who laughs at math- 
ematician, metaphysician, scientist, as a thousand steam- 
ships furrowing the ocean laugh at the demonstrations of 
Dr. Lardner that it was absurd, unthinkable, impossible 
for any one of them to eross it once. Try to show that 
Christ was pure deity with mere human semblance, and 
history will quietly entomb you in the dusty vault of the 
Gnostics, and the Eutychians, and their descendants. 
Try to show that Jesus was but a man, and the faith of 
Christendom will let you sink out of sight in the Lethean 
fellowship of the Ebionites, the Nestorians, and their 
kind. For no theory can be framed to account for the 
facts of His career, as set forth in the Gospels, save that 
which recognizes both His deity and His humanity, 
bound together in perfect personal unity. The appeal 
therefore should not be from hypotheses to history, but 
vice versa ; fact first, explanation afterward. Could any 
one not a veritable man live, labor, suffer, and die as He 
did? Could any one but God reveal truth, and love, 
and heaven, and forgive sinners, and transform moral 
character, and master nature, and Satan, and sin, and 
death as He did? As every living man compels us to 
believe in both his body and his mind, however difficult 
it may be to conceive of their union, so the one living 
Jesus Christ compels us to recognize the veritable union 
in Him of God and man. His actual life and character, 
real, consistent, organic, inseparable in the totality of its 
united human and divine manifestations, is an historical 
fact—a fact without true precedent or parallel in all the 
mythic apotheoses or theophanies of the world ; a fact 


78 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH, 


immeasurably beyond the fabricating genus of either the 
apostles’ age or any other; a fact in which sinful yet 
always aspiring human nature finds its only invulnerable 
satisfaction and peace ; a fact which alone reconciles the 
contradictories of thought and character, and solves, or 
promises to solve, the moral enigmas of mankind ; the 
fact to which Christian preachers and apologists must 
make both their first and their final appeal. 

To that fact, as illustrated in the concrete examples 
suggested, I would draw your attention. These exam- 
ples of His unique reconciling power could be largely 
extended ; but so far as given, they suggest (1) Jesus’ 
relations to human life as influenced by society and by 
sex; (2) His relations to contradictories of human 
thought, especially as dealing with what I may call its 
longitude, which measures the real and ideal, and its 
latitude, which measures conservatism and_ progress ; 
(3) His relation to the world’s supreme problem—the 
moral problem of sin, temptation, and redemption ; and 
(4) His common relations, rather, His actual identity, 
with both God and man. 

These momentous antinomies, the despair of all Christ- 
less philosophy and life, become simple, not, indeed, as 
a matter of metaphysics, but as a matter of history and 
fact, when presented in the biography of Jesus Christ. 
The plain narrative of the Gospel enabled the early 
Christians, equally with ourselves, to understand the 
practical explanation and significance of these mysteries 
long before they were able to formulate the doctrine of 
the person of Christ. The facts are the doctrine; the 
facts are their own best explanation. This life is the 
great self-evidencing evidence of Christianity. Preach- 
ing Christ is, therefore, I profoundly believe, the best 
system of apologetics, as well as the simplest and easiest. 


JESUS CHRIST, THE UNIQUE RECONCILER. fey 


Ilappy, dear brethren, are we preachers of the Gospel. 
There need be no schism in our experience between busi- 
ness and religion, between duty and pleasure, between 
work and life. It is all one, and that one Christ. To 
us Christ is Christianity ; Christ is character ; Christ is 
life; Christ is heaven. To have Christ, to preach 
Christ, is our indistinguishable privilege and responsi- 
bility. That which we know of Him we are to pro- 
claim ; that which we proclaim we are to do and become, 
that Christ may be all in all. 

You may have seen the dervishes at their worship. 
Swaying their bodies more and more violently, backward 
and forward, or from side to side, they whispered, 
chanted, shouted only one word, their name of God, 
Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, until at last they swooned 
away in ecstatic weariness. ‘They are, perhaps, a sadly 
misapplied example of our own best apologetic method. 
With us, too, one name is above every name. That 
dear name we should constantly repeat until we joyously 
lie down in the last sleep of rest and peace. Not in 
Mohammedan ignorance, not in their dull fear of fate, 
not in mere physical frenzy, but with winning wisdom, 
trust, and love, in unbroken concert, before the bending 
heavens and all quarters of our dying world, we, like 
Paul, should determine to know nothing save Christ, and 
Him erucified, 


LECTURE IV. 


An Apologetic for the Resurrection of Christ. 


BY REV. NATHANIEL WEST, D.D. 


General Statement. 


I srEK to organize, in main outline, a general apolo- 
getic for the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead, 
both on its speculative and historical sides, and to justify 
the effort. From the nature of the case, such an outline 
must be, in effect, a general defence of the supernatural, 
interwoven with a special defence of Christianity, around 
that central fact which is the light and support of both. 
This may seem, at first, a procedure too complex, but 
from the perplexing abundance and variety of apologetic 
material, which so often confuses the mind and bewilders 
the judgment, I feel satisfied that a discriminating sur- 
vey of the entire conflict will not be unacceptable to the 
student who desires to see, at one glance, something of 
the vast field for which he is called to qualify himself, in 
order to meet successfully the aggressors against the 
Christian faith. In an age like ours, when, as that 
sainted scholar, Auberlen, said, not long ago, ‘‘ the ene- 
mies of Christianity are still doggedly repeating that a 
resurrection from the dead is ampossible and contrary to 
experience,” it is well to remember that these two ideas 
—of which Spinoza represents the first and Hume the 
second—are to-day more ‘‘ doggedly repeated” than 
ever, and will remain repeated, from year to year, until 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 81 


the risen and reappearing Lord shall make their repe- 
tition forever impossible. 

Never, since the birth of Christ, have the brillianey and 
power of the Christian apologetics of the present century 
been equalled in any age. In every department—specu- 
Jative, historical, scientific, critical—imperishable victo- 
ries have been won, wide as the field of human knowl- 
edge, and co-extensive with the scope of revelation. 
- Greater than the Gnostic conflict of the second century, 
and intense as the Reformation of the sixteenth, the 
modern struggle has allowed no form of error, past, or 
possible to rise in the future, to be wanting to enhance 
the great engagement. Oriental and Occidental philoso- 
phies have been ordered to the front, arrayed in new 
uniform, and bannered with new terminologies. De- 
funct heresies, stunned to their graves by the blow of 
advancing Christianity, and mute for sixteen centuries, 
have been exhumed and galvanized into fresh life. All 
that the ‘‘ Time-spirit,’”’ boasting of ““Awtur, Bildung, 
und Humanitiét,’’? can do has been done already for the 
destruction of the Christian faith. Along the whole line 
of action the Church has been assailed by a foe a thou- 
sand times repelled, a thousand times returning, the one 
purpose of the whole assault being to overthrow the 
supernatural—in other words, to banish ‘‘ méractes.’? 1t 
matters not that an attempt so daring could not be suc- 
cessful. ‘To stagger our personal trust in Christianity, 
and darken hope, to wreck the confidence of men, is 
practically one with the objective ruin of the truth itself. 

I speak, therefore, of that central fact of which 
Spinoza said, ‘If I could believe the resurrection, I 
would become a Christian at once,’’ and of which Hume’ 
has said, ‘‘ No human testimony can reach to the super- 
natural,” an event Strauss saw fit to call the ‘‘ humbug 


82 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


of history,’’ and yet of which even a Volkmar affirmed, 
‘©The resurrection of Christ is one of the most certain 
facts in the world’s history, whether we understand it or 
not.”? No language can exaggerate its importance. It 
is the most stupendous fact in the history of the world, 
unparalleled, astounding, unique. Pressensé has only 
uttered what all the world believes, when he declares, as 
Paul taught him to declare, ‘‘ If the fact of the resurrec- 
tion of Christ does not continue an integral part of Chris- 
tianity, it no longer pays to speak of the rest.’’? And 
what Godet asserts—viz., that ‘‘such an event includes 
everything, or else it has no existence,’’ is no immoder- 
ate expression. What the sun is to the solar system the 
resurrection of Christ is to all things secular, as well as 
sacred. Wothing is true, in any department of knowl- 
edge or being, if this is not. We have no valid evidence 
of our own mental operations, none for the existence of 
an external world, nor of God, nor of natural or revealed 
religion, nor for any truth in science, philosophy, or his- 
tory. The principles that enter into the speculative and 
historical defence of the resurrection of Christ relate 
themselves to every department of knowledge and being. 
Outside the truths that cluster around the empty grave of 
Jesus the supernatural has no defence, the natural has 
none. The denial or doubt of His resurrection antag- 
onizes the elementary principles constitutional to the 
mind, and the native laws of thought, apart from which 
neither knowledge nor experience is possible. It has 
pleased God so to correlate the universe and man, the 
truths of consciousness and history, nature and grace, 
and so mingle the rudiments of redemption with the facts 
and processes of creation, each a parable of the other, 
and all grounded in asystem of identical laws, that we 
study no part of His wonderful works without studying 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 83 


something of all, and that to affirm or deny the truth in 
any one sphere of investigation is tantamount to the 
same affirmation or denial in all other spheres. The 
universe, not less than the Church, is ‘‘ complete” in a 
risen Christ, as are ‘‘ all wisdom and knowledge,’’ in 
Him who is ‘* Head over all,’? and ‘‘ by whom are all 
things.’? The more we think of this great event the 
more it grows upon us. To him whose eye is enlight- 
ened to detect its wide significance it links itself with the 
whole purpose of God in the past, and its whole fulfil- 
ment, secular and sacred, throughout all ages to come. 
Universal history is put under its dominion, and by 
means of it all true science and philosophy must serve 
Him who is their Author, End, and Explanation. Jf 
Christ be not risen, nothing exists. Demonstration is 
vain. The trustworthiness of reason and of sense is 
wrecked. Illusion reigns. God, angels, history, sci- 
ence, philosophy, revelation, are false, are non-existent. 
Nor can the scepticism that drives us to such a conclu- 
sion halt at the half-way house of agnosticism, but must 
plunge headlong into the nihilistic gulf, its last and 
logical result. 


The Presumptions. 


It is of the first importance for us to remember that, 
by three significant monuments of testimony, standing 
side by side along the whole pathway of eighteen centu- 
ries, we of to-day are directly connected—no gulf inter- 
vening—with all the sorrows of Friday afternoon, April 
7th, and all the joys of Sunday morning, April 9th, the 
birthday of the Christian Church, and with her royal 
baptism in the Holy City, six weeks later, May 26th 
A.D. 30. Not Pentecost, but the resurrection of Christ 


84 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


was the natal hour of the Church of Christ, ‘‘ bone of 
His bone and flesh of /7zs flesh,’’ one with Him in the 
likeness of His death and resurrection, and brought to 
His side in joy, even as Eve was brought to the side of 
the first Adam waked from His sleep. The three great 
monuments to which I refer are the Lord’s Supper, the 
Lord’s Day, and Christian Baptism : two perpetual sacra- 
ments, one grounded in the death, the other in the resur- 
rection of Christ, both linked together by a monumental 
day. These ordinances, uplifted as pillars of witness to 
the facts of redemption and the life and faith of the 
Church, have stood the test of time and encountered the 
storm of ages. Empires have arisen and fallen like 
waves of the sea, but these have remained unmoved as 
rocks in the surge, memorials of the wondrous events 
that gave them being. Ido not say that these monu- 
ments in themselves are conclusive of the truth of what 
they profess. I do not affirm that they prove the his- 
toric existence of the events they represent. What they 
do prove is that the first Christian community, standing 
nearest the person of Christ, eighteen hundred years 
ago, and best able to judge, ded believe in the resurrec- 
tion of Christ, of which His real death is the presupposi- 
tion, and in the outpouring of the Spirit of a risen and 
ascended Christ, its necessary consequence ; and that, in 
the full assurance of this belief, the first Christians went 
everywhere, at the risk of their lives, preaching that 
‘* Jesus died and rose again,’’ and ‘‘ shed forth” the gift 
of eternal life. Isay the presumption, arising in each 
case from these continuous historic monuments and this 
one homiletical fact, is that the apostolic faith was 
founded in truth and not in fiction, and is strong as the 
undisturbed existence of these monuments and this fact, 
for so long a time, is undisputed. And all the more 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 85 


impressive is the logical effect of this when we remember 
that the events involved are of such a character and so 
identified with the person of Christ as that to deny them 
is virtually to deny the historic existence of Christianity ; 
and, doing so, to wreck the fundamental principles of all 
knowledge and all being. Especially vital are these pre- 
sumptions in view of the position taken by the admirers 
of comparative religion to-day—viz., that ald religions 
have a common natural origin, accredited and colored 
alike by variant fable and unhistoric miracle, and differ- 
entiated only by the limitations of the inventive and 
logical faculties, and the accidents of time, place, educa- 
tion, genius, climate, and race. Our apologetic denies 
this, and affirms that Christ is an Acstoric person and 
His resurrection an fAistoric event, not of evidential 
value alone, for His claims, but the central and integral 
fact of redemption and life, with which Christianity 
stands or falls. It embraces everything. Zardusht, 
Buddha, and Mahomet may go, and yet the doctrines, 
worship, and order of Parsism, Buddhism, and Islam re- 
main intact, and the devotees, and mankind, be bereaved 
of no blessing, and suffer no loss. But with the denial of 
the resurrection of Christ not only does the whole doc- 
trine, worship, and order, of the Christian religion perish 
and mankind lose all, but Christ Himself, as a historic 
person, disappears from the scene. The absolute extinc- 
tion of the Founder of Christianity is the result. His 
historic reality becomes an impossibility. The evidence 
for His inearnation fails. In the light of such consider- 
ations we see not only the importance of the monumental 
presumptions for the historic truth of the resurrection, 
but the bearing also of Paul’s last words to Timothy, 
“* Remember that Jesus Christ, of the seed of David, was 
raised from the dead, according to my gospel.’ As if 


86 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


he had said, Whatever else is forgotten, remember that. 
The defence of that is the defence of all ! 


State of the Case. The Presuppositions. 


Now, then, I advance to say that the existence of a 
universal belref, by the Church, in the resurrection of 
Christ, as the one thing our adversaries admit, denying 
alt else. The Church’s belief they admit; the alleged 
fact of the resurrection they deny. Just here it is we 
learn, first of all, how serious is the issue between us and 
them, and how wide the field of conflict and great the 
struggle, and what need there is of the best preparation 
to hold and defend this important truth. We enter the 
field with a mass of historical testimony and empirical 
proofs of eighteen centuries, whose scientitic value is not 
surpassed by any evidence adduced in support of any 
established truth in science or philosophy to-day. Our 
official documents alone have stood the test of the most 
inexorable criticism, and the witnesses have been subject- 
ed to the most relentless cross-examination. Notwith- 
standing this, the fact of the resurrection is still denied 
upon two grounds: (1) that miracles are impossible, and 
(2) that miracles are incredible ; and from the beginning, 
conscious of the weakness of such a word as that which 
escaped the lips of Bauer—viz., that ‘‘the Church’s 
belief is a matter of no consequence,” the enemies of 
Christianity have sought to account for that belief in 
various ways: (1) by the theory of fraud; (2) by the 
theory of swoon ; (3) by the theory of ‘vision ; (4) by the 
theory of spirit-manifestation. Our apologetic is com- 
pelled to meet the whole issue. In doing so we reassert 
the fact of the resurrection upon two grounds : (1) that 
miracles are possible ; (2) that miracles are credible ; and 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. -87 


next proceed to show that the fraud, swoon, vision, and 
spirit-manifestation theories are not only themselves im- 
possible and incredible, because absurd and contradicted 
by the admitted circumstances of the case, but do not 
and cannot account for the immediate facts of the case, 
nor for the moral phenomena and historic events that 
instantly accompanied and next followed the resurrec- 
tion, or, if you please, the Church’s belief of it, such as 
the organization of the New Testament Church and 
canon, nor for the mighty revolution in the Roman 
Empire and in history, to which the formation and exist- 
ence of Christendom are due. 

You see the situation, I hope. Let us be honest and 
just. Each of the contending parties actually comes to 
this great discussion with two foregone conclusions, two 
antagonizing presuppositions, on each side, vital to the 
success of each, and apart from which there can be no 
debate. The Christian side assumes (1) the existence of 
a personal God, a cause adequate to produce the miracu- 
lous effect, and (2) the adequacy of human testimony to 
prove the sensible fact ; in other words, natural theism 
and the validity of the testimony of the senses to any 
event within their jurisdiction, regardless of the secret 
mode of its occurrence. The adverse side assumes (I.) 
either (1) the non-existence of God, or (2) that all that 
exists is God, or (8) that if there is a God, He has noth- 
ing to do with the affairs of men, or (4) am not quite 
sure there is a God, or (5) am very sure there can be 
none ; in other words, no God, all God, remote God, 
don’t know if there is a God, do know there can be 
none ; and(II.) the inadequacy of the senses to bear wit- 
ness to any event beyond the range of ordinary experi- 
ence, and unaccountable by the laws of nature ; in other 
words, again, the other side assumes and opposes to us 


88 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


philosophic and scientific naturalism, under the forms of 
atheism, pantheism, deism, agnosticism, and positivism, 
supported by the maxim of empirical scepticism, that it 
is ‘‘ more likely’? the testimony of the witnesses should 
be false than it is ‘likely’? the alleged fact should be 
true—that is, so far as testimony is concerned, the ques- 
tion is reduced to one of ‘ probability,” with the odds 
against the miraculous fact. Such the situation. God 
being a cipher, a totum, an absentee, an interrogation 
point, or an impossible, man a victim of delusion and 
doubt, and the universe an evolutionary growth from 
necessary law outside a first creative cause, the resurrec- 
tion of Christ is both impossible and incredible. This is 
the quod erat demonstrandum of our adversaries. 


Philosophical and Scientifie Objections. 


We have now an important question to face. Shall 
we ignore the philosophic and scientific objections to the 
resurrection, as is commonly done in the ordinary and 
current apologies, and ‘‘ confine ourselves to historical 
criticism’’? This is to allow the enemy the privilege of 
retreat to uncontested ground, or else limit the discus- 
sion to theists alone, and, yet more, only to such theists as 
admit miracles, and the credibility of testimony to the 
same, which all theists do not. It is to allow the enemy 
a place where he may stand and laugh at ‘historic 
proofs.”? It isto grant him Ads presuppositions which 
neutralize owrs, or decline the debate. Both sets of 
foregone conclusions cannot be true, since each excludes 
the other. God or no God is more important than testi- 
mony or no testimony, for our contention is not with 
theists alone. I am aware it is common to say that the 
whole question as to the resurrection of Christ is “ sim- 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 89. 


ply one of historic fact,” to be settled by historical evi- 
dence, and we are to ‘‘disregard all objections to the 
supernatural.’? Spinoza, Spencer, Huxley, Harrison, 
Comte, Clifford, and many others would smile at that ; 
and Mill and Hume, who virtually deny a God while 
professing to give proofs of His existence, would do the 
same. I regard the position as both incorrect and fatal, 
and as really to ‘* beg the question,” and not win a vic- 
tory, as it would be to fall back upon the inspiration of 
the records, when the possibility of inspiration is denied 
and is one of the very points involved in the question of 
the supernatural. Our enemies are not content to cross- 
examine a witness, or attempt to impeach his character, 
or question his trustworthiness. A bolder task is as- 
sayed—the destruction of the possibility of the fact itself. 
Myriad witnesses, deposing to a first miracle in history, 
could only provoke the Sadducean scoff and Athenian 
sneer. John Stuart Mill is candid enough to say that 
‘*the main question is really that of theism,’’ or, as 
Principal Cairns puts it, that ‘‘ while to a believer in God 
it is one of evidence, yet to an unbeliever the real question 
is, Is God possible ?”’ and this ‘* because the miracle ap- 
peals to a prior belief in God.’’ Both sides, then, of the 
great area of apologetics are involved, the speculative 
not less than the historical. The enemy’s position is a 
strong one, and commands the Christian defences, and 
our business is to dislodge him, or if not occupying for 
the moment his position, but contending with us on his- 
torical ground, still a force must be detailed to explode 
his speculative stronghold, leaving no place for retreat 
when defeated on the battle-ground of the historical evi- 
dences. His postulates, in other words, must be de- 
stroyed, and the Christian postulates proved indestructi- 
ble. If it is true that no one, Christian or enemy, has a 


90 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


right to decide historic questions by unproved dogmatic 
presuppositions, it is equally true that no one has a right 
to decide speculative questions by historic post-affirma- 
tions. The main question is one of power; the sub- 
ordinate question is one of Scripture, these being the 
two great divisions of all apologetic for the resurrec- 
tion, as outlined by Christ Himself, in His reply to the 
Sadducees: ‘‘ Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures 
nor the power of God.’’? One thing is transparently 
clear—the resurrection of Christ cannot even be con- 
ceived of as a historic fact except as subsumed under the 
category of cause and effect, nor yet as due to a merely 
natural cause, but wholly to a higher causality, an eccen- 
tric phenomenon, unaccountable by any “‘ law’? known 
or unknown, and due solely to a personal power tran- 
~scending all law, which is the very point in dispute. 
The question of fact involves the question of its possibil- 
ity. The question of testimony does the same. As 
Canon Mozley has properly said, ‘* That which testimony 
is capable of proving must be something within the 
bounds of reason—something we can imagine as possi- 
ble—t.e., the challenge of its possibility must needs be 
shown to be groundless and absurd.’? By men who accent 
the inflexibility of nature’s laws, or ‘‘ obliterate’’ the anti- 
thesis between the supernatural and natural, confounding 
‘* cause”’ with ‘‘ law,’’ you will not be allowed to define 
a miracle as ‘‘ the entrance of the supernatural into the 
natural,” and, so, quietly assume your postulate, while 
denying to them the right to assume theirs. They repel 
your supernatural. Nor may you identify an extra- 
mundane intelligence with cosmical law, except upon 
pain of being marched straight into pantheism. © Fair 
play is demanded, and honor and wisdom alike should 
guard the discussion. In any case, the speculative has 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 91 


precedence over the historical side of the question. I 
am satisfied, after frequent tests, it is not so much be- 
cause of any insufficiency of historic proof that the fact 
of the resurrection of Christ is discredited, as it is be- 
cause of the secret working of a*natural scepticism, 
amounting to practical atheism, and also to a cherished 
aversion from all faith in what is beyond the range of 
common experience, two fatalities Hume has adroitly 
woven into his ‘‘ Treatise on Human Nature,’’ and 
shown to belong to mankind, mixing the same with a 
false method and system of thought careering to-day 
with such power ; denying the very conception of cause ; 
resolving thought itself into mere illusion ; making ex- 
perience the sole test and measure of truth ; so exclud- 
ing all rational or @ priort grounds of belief. 


Advantage and Importance of the Method. 


In thus emphasizing the speculative side of the resur- 
rection, great help will be brought to the historical side. 
The strong conviction secured by a bright theistic 
defence can only render the evidential value of the testi- 
mony to the resurrection all the more cogent, dissolving 
a cloud of confusion that so often obscures its clearness, 
and removing a mass of distrust that so often impairs its 
streneth.. At every step it will shine, that all the assail- 
ants of Christianity allege against this cardinal doctrine, 
and all that critical art has employed to discredit its evi- 
dence, is inspired alone by a dislike of the supernatural 
in the sphere of nature, fortified by a ‘‘ vain philoso- 
phy” and a ‘‘ science falsely so called,” and that thes is 
the fertile source of all the theories devised to account 
for the Church’s belief, apart from the recognition of the 
fact of the resurrection. It is not that the resurrection 


92 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


of Christ will not abide the corner-stone of the Christian 
faith, aside from all philosophy and science, but it is that 
when assailed by weapons drawn from such sources as 
these, then, by corresponding weapons, the battle must be 
fought, and the Christian postulates brought to victory. 
It is the method Paul himself has used, giving us, first 
of all, as at Athens, excellent proofs of the existence of 
God, and then advancing to the historic fact of the res- 
urrection. In his memorable challenge to Agrippa he 
combines doth the postulates thus: ‘‘ Why should it be 
thought a thing encredible with you that God should 
raise the dead?’ The certainty of the fact is grounded 
in the prior possibility of the fact, and the credibility of 
the evidence. And to this hour the Christian apologist 
is bound to contend in the same way as did Paul, before 
ever the New Testament records were written, and, step- 
ping outside the ordinary. path, decide the preliminary 
issues (which really decides all) upon the wide arena of 
philosophy and science common to the friends and foes 
of revelation alike. We cannot too much insist on this. 
He who will successfully defend the resurrection of 
Christ in presence of the philosophical and scientific 
thought of to-day must first master the principles and 
methods which underlie the various systems of certain 
men who have aspired not merely to relay the founda- 
tions, but to reconstruct the whole fabric of human 
knowledge, by the assertion of mere hypotheses and 
denial of those primitive and universal truths and laws 
of thought on which all philosophy and science depend, 
and apart from which knowledge, experience, and certi- 
tude are impossible. The first truths of the ‘ personal 
perdurable self” must be defended at all cost. Such 
truths underlie the whole apologetic, and are the ulti- 
mates on which the decision rests. And so we force the 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 93 


issue squarely, without any evasion, that either the resur- 
rection of Christ is a real and the best and most thoroughly 
established fact, resting not only on a philosophical and 
scientific basis, but attested by competent and credible 
witness, or else ald philosophy, science, and history, ad/ 
being, knowledge, and faith are non-existent. ‘‘ Maya!” 
as the Hindoo says, ald zs illusion ! Either ‘‘ the Lord is 
risen and has appeared to Simon,’’ or those first princi- 
ples which pre-condition all experienve—viz., cause, 
personality, identity, God, faith, self, and the direct 
perception of the external world, all constitutional and 
therefore universal, are hopelessly wrecked forever. 
Primitive indemonstrable and axiomatic truth is gone. 
The preaching of @ priort knowledge is vain. Evidence 
is vain. Weare yet in our metaphysical and scientific 
sins, and Augustine, Anselm, Descartes, Newton, Bacon, 
Cousin, and Hamilton too, and all the princes of thought, 
who have witnessed a good confession for the Christian 
postulates, and are fallen asleep, are perished, if so be 
that the two great presuppositions which lie behind the 
historic evidence are false, and the resurrection, after 
all, is neither possible nor to be believed. We are vic- 
timized by a necessity of our nature, without remedy, 
and Omar Khayyam and Schopenhauer and Heine, Leo- 
pardi and Von Hartmann, are right in teaching that this 
ds a pessimistic world, the worst possible to be conceived, 
where man is mocked by phantoms of truth which are 
forms of lies, and is, indeed, ‘‘ most miserable,’’ death, 
without resurrection, being the happy goal of his care 
and pain. 


Our Declaration. 


Our declaration as to the fact of the resurrection is 
very simple and clear. We declare that Jesus Christ, of 


94 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION O# THE FAITH. 


the seed of David, was raised from the dead the third 
day, and, that for eighteen centuries, as now, it has been 
the firm belief of the whole Christian Church. Claim- 
ing the scientific right to use the whole New Testament 
as direct evidence, original, admissible, the official reg- 
ister and public journal, the authoritative document of 
the new community organized for the benefit of man- 
kind, and in which the partnership statement of each 
member is the declaration of all, the testimony of each 
to the main fact being that of the whole, the entire 
record being part of the ves geste of which the resurrec- 
tion is the central event, and out of which the record 
grew contemporaneously with the event itself, and by — 
necessity ; and claiming the right, also, to present the 
whole presumptive argument from prophecy, and all the 
empirical proofs in Christendom for eighteen centuries 
as corroborating testimony—we challenge the legal inqui- 
sition of this ancient public fact according to the rules of 
historical criticism and the laws of evidence applicable to 
the investigation of such cases. We allege that Jesus of 
Nazareth was crucified, dead, and buried, and that He 
rose from the dead the third day ; that to His disciples He 
showed Himself alive after His passion, being seen of 
them forty days, and speaking of the things pertaining to 
the kingdom ; that ‘“‘ Him God raised up the third day, 
and showed Him openly, not to all the people, but to wit- 
nesses chosen before of God, even us, who did eat and 
drink with Him after He rose from dead ;’’ that ‘‘ He 
was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve, of James, and 
of above fivé hundred brethren at once, the greater part 
of whom’’—say three hundred—were still alive near 
thirty years after the event, and all of whom, without 
exception, were eye-witnesses of His risen person, within 
six weeks from the date of the resurrection, and that 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 95 


“last of all,” six years later, He was seen of Paul, as of 
‘‘one born out of due time.’’? And, only to note, in 
passing, the argument from prophecy, ‘* we«declare to 
you the glad tidings, how that the promise which was 
made to the fathers, God hath fulfilled the same unto us, 
their children, in that He raised up Jesus again,”’ and 
that ‘‘ through this Man is preached unto you forgive- 
ness of sins.” ‘* Zhzs Jesus hath God raised up, whereof 
we all are witnesses.”” This is our declaration. This 
our testimony. On this one fact of history we rest the 
whole weight of Christianity, conceding that if the fact 
alleged is false, then Christianity is false ; and not only 
so, but asserting that everything else in the universe is 
false, and God is false, and still more that there is 
neither God nor universe to be false; but the fact 
alleged being true, then Christianity, and God, and the 
universe are true, and we present it in triumph to man- 
kind, as (1) a fact of history the most stupendous ; as (2) 
a fulfilment of prophecy the most glorious; as (38) a 
foundation of faith the most precious ; as (4) a fountain 
of life the most exhaustless to all believers; and as (5) a 
forelight of the world’s regenesis—all things new—a 
spectacle of splendor the most victorious to the redeemed, 
to angels, and to God! So say we all! On this we 
stand. By this we explain the universal delzef of the 
Church, her perpetuity, her constancy, and the unparal- 
leled revolution accomplished in history. Begotten by 
it to a new hope, and by it heirs of life eternal, we wit- 
ness for it with an ardor no calamity can extinguish or 
abate. 


Our Adversaries Answer. 


The answer of our adversaries to this declaration lL 
need but briefly touch upon, enlarging but a moment on 


96 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


what has already been indicated.. They answer, alleg- 
ing: I. The impossibility of iniracles, pleading, in 
a general way, in support of this, (1) all the forms of 
philosophic and scientific naturalism already mentioned, 
and, (2) in a special way, the ‘‘new psychology and 
metaphysics,” or new science of the mental powers and 
of first truths, whereby all @ priort knowledge is denied, 
self-consciousness repudiated, and self, with all its intui- 
tions, such as being, matter, spirit, personality, God, 
cause, life, and obligation, and all our mental operations, 
are declared to be the consequence of ‘‘ one persistent 
physical foree,’’ backed by some ‘‘ unknown eternal 
energy,’’ whether personal or impersonal cannot be told, 
and shaped by biological and social circumstance, envi- 
ronment, heredity, and variant evolution. Thus the 
knowledge of a personal self, as the type and image of a 
personal God, its first free cause and only source of all 
our necessary intuitions, is removed ; the sovereignty of 
consciousness is dethroned ; the criteria of all @ priorz— 
that is, of all primitive or necessary truth, are made im- 
possible; aud no ground is left on which to build 
securely any natural knowledge of God, religion, or 
morality. All certitude is gone. The whole foundation 
of our classic arguments for God’s existence is destroyed, 
and neither place nor proof of any power to create or 
raise the dead remains. Their first postulate is deemed 
established. The resurrection of Christ is impossible, 
because of certain speculative theories of the universe 
and man. They argue: Il. The ineredibility of mira- 
cles, pleading (1) the higher criticism, so excluding all 
the record-existence, save four epistles—two to the 
Corinthians, one to the Galatians, and one to the Romans 
—in other words, leaving only Paul to tell us what he 
knows about the fact, then charging him with lunacy. 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 97 


They plead (2) the absolute uniformity of natures 
course, or the established order of nature, inferred from 
experience which is made the sole measure of fact and 
sole ground of our belief in human testimony--the 
dictum of empirical scepticism—thus reducing the whole 
question to one of “‘ probability,’ asserting it is ‘ more 
likely’? that the resurrection of Christ should be false 
than ‘‘ dikely”’ that the evidence for it should be true. 
And so they deem their second postulate established. 
The resurrection of Christ is incredible. ‘‘ No human 
testimony can reach the supernatural.’ III. Certain 
theories they next allege to account for the Church’s 
belief in this impossible and incredible event. (1) 
Of fraud; the body was stolen, the grave was robbed. 
(2) Of swoon; the resurrection was a recovery from 
an incomplete death. (8) Of vision; the first wit- 
nesses to Christianity were honest, but hallucinated. 
(4) Of spirit-manifestation ; the first witnesses were not 
hallucinated, but the risen and glorified spirit of the 
unraised Jesus produced in the ménds of the disciples a 
human spirit form of the still dead Christ, which object- 
ified itself in ocular beholding—‘‘a telegram from 
heaven,’’ as Keim approvingly describes it—that He 
who was dead is dead still, and remains dead forever- 
more, while ‘‘ His Spirit’? lives in human form and 
reveals itself to men, who think it stands before them ! 
Such the answer of our adversaries. Its design is clear, 
and that is (1) to exclude or deny a personal God ; (2) to 
invalidate the testimony of the senses; (8) to explain 
away the resurrection on the supposition of theft, mis- 
take, natural delusion, or divine deception ; so leaving 
Christianity without a philosophical and scientific, or 
even an historic, basis, and grounding the Church’s faith 
either in a felony, a fainting fit, a fever of the brain, or 


98 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


a phantom from the Holy Ghost, and teaching that 
Christ and Christianity alike must be relegated to the 
past, an age uncritical and full of superstition. You see 
the full figure of the enemy of the Christian faith in 
these ‘last times.’? He has the colors of a chameleon, 
the forms of Proteus, the eyes of Argus, and the sub- 
tlety and brains of Satan. It is that atheistic ‘‘ spirit of 
Antichrist” ‘‘ whereof we have heard it shall come, and 
even now is already in the world ;” the “‘ spirit of error,” 
illuminant as an ‘angel of light,’’ ‘‘liar,”’ and ** de- 
ceiver,”? ‘‘ denying the Father and the Son,”’ bewitch- 
ing, beguiling, and boasting of philosophy and science, 
culture and progress, and seeking, by evolutionary and 
revolutionary means, to destroy all the foundations ; 
that symbolized world-power and world-wisdom, or beast 
and prophet of falsehood and violence, which rises insur- 
gent against the ‘‘ Lamb,” the “‘ Amen,” the *¢ faithful 
and true witness of God.” 


Our Replication. | 


Our replication to this answer can be given, as is 
evident, only in outline and essence. I. We reply, 
defending the possibility of miracles, and plead in gen- 
eral, (1) philosophic and scientific theism as against all 
the opposing forms of error before mentioned—that is, 
we prove the supernatural and God’s relations to the 
universe and man. -Thus we establish a free, personal, 
supreme, uncaused first cause and support of all things, 
a ‘* will-power’’? equal to create or raise the dead—a 
cause not kindred with material things, nor standing in 
the row and regress of physical antecedents, but spzrit- 
ual, without which quality it could not be the “ first.” 
Here belong all the arguments for the divine existence, 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 99 


a fivefold interlinked and thorough demonstration, rest- 
ing ultimately on an @ priori, primitive, and indemon- 
strable, yet valid, basis in the mind, and on a constitu- 
tional and necessary act of faith herein—arguments none 
of which, not even the ontological, much less the cosmo- 
logical, and, least of all, the argument from order and 
design, have lost their force, or been abraded by the 
influence of the Kantian logic books, or by our modern 
scientific criticism, but remain as solid and as strong as 
ever. (2) We plead a true psychology and metaphysics, 
grounded in a direct and immediate knowledge of self, 
as well as of its various states, and of the external world ; 
in the essential difference there is between matter and 
mind ; in the authority of consciousness, the sovereignty 
of first truths, the trustworthiness of our faculties and 
senses, and the validity of our logical conclusions—a 
philosophy which recognizes the priority of that ‘‘ etwas 
beharrliches,” that ‘‘ something perdurable,’? in man, 
that persistent, unchangeable, identical, causal, unitous, 
and life-imparting personality, which is the type and 
image of God, His mirror and His miniature, save where 
sin has marred and tarnished it. By means of. this, 
carried to infinity and stripped of imperfection, we 
reach a spiritual first cause able to create, a power not 
only adequate to communicate life to inorganic matter, 
but “‘to raise the dead.” The moment we surrender 
this position or consent that ‘‘ self” may be an evolution 
of mere matter, or consciousness illusive, ald is lost. 
The supernatural is sunk out of sight forever. Here is 
the Gibraltar of our apologetic for the resurrection, on 
its speculative side, and to be defended at whatever cost. 
Belief in God precedes belief in Christ. ‘‘ Ye believe 
in God ; believe also in Me.’ Only so long as we are 
true to *‘ sedf,”’ and obey that fundamental maxim which 


100 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


all antiquity has consecrated, I’ v@O1 Geavtov, know 
thyself, do we hold the rock on which all theistic argu- 
ments must rest, the necessary data and deliverances of 
consciousness, data and deliverances which, as Sir W. 
Hamilton well says, ‘‘ cannot be doubted except at the 
expense of self-contradiction and self-annihilation, and 
which must be believed, otherwise we are deceived by a 
perfidious Creator.” By these we overthrow the false 
psychology and metaphysics which underlie the whole 
false science of the present day. Thus we vindicate our 
first postulate, and prove that the resurrection of Christ 
was possvble. 

(IIl.) We reply, defending the credibility of miracles, 
and specially the miracle of the resurrection of Christ, 
and (1) we plead our scientific right to use the whole 
New Testament, as evidence direct, admissible, no line 
of which is second-hand or hearsay, but all original, the 
testimony of the first Christian community founded on 
the resurrection, all of whom were ° eye-witnesses” of 
the risen Jesus, and all whose narrators or writers were 
not mere repeaters or reporters, but official recorders, 
themselves ‘‘ eye-witnesses,’’ noting down the testimony 
in the case. This right we rest, not merely upon the 
acknowledged principles of evidence such as a Greenleaf 
and Sir George Cornwall Lewis lay down, but upon a 
victory in biblical criticism most brilliant and decisive, 
after sixty years of hottest conflict known to history, and 
so we meet, with a confident denial, the charge of our 
adversaries that all the books of the New Testament, 
save the four epistles named already, have been proved 
inadequate and untrustworthy by the results of modern 
examination. We show that, from the author of the 
recently discovered AiwWayn, or ‘* Teaching of the 
Twelve Apostles,” to the last Gnostic assailant of Chris- 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 101 


tianity, the ancient literature, not only ecclesiastical, but 
heretical, antagonistic, and apocryphal, and reaching back 
into the apostolic age itself, is burdened with proof that, 
not alone the ‘‘ Four Gospels,’’? but the ‘‘ whole New 
Testament,’’ as we have it, save a few disputed passages 
not bearing on this case, was recognized as of equal rank 
with the Old, and read in Christian assemblies (though 
not possessed egually by all) throughout the Roman Em- 
pire, before the close of the first century. The old 
yéypantat, employed to designate the canonicity of the 
Old Testament, was applied to the New, the entire ypagy 
of the New co-ordinated with the Ea ypappata of 
the Old, and appellatively used to indicate its inspira- 
tion ; an external evidence which Tischendorf declares 
‘‘ conclusive of the trustworthiness of the New Testa- 
ment records, and which can never be set aside, even by 
substituting for genuine science the sceptical criticism of 
a science falsely so called.” And yet, notwithstanding all 
this, so strong is our cause, and so full of proof, that, for 
the sake of argument, we are perfectly willing to accept 
the menimum of evidence our adversaries graciously 
stoop to grant us—nay, more, to content ourselves with a 
moiety of it—viz., the Hirst Epistle to the Corinthians 
and that to the Galatians, and by these alone establish 
triumphantly the historic fact of the resurrection of 
Christ, and refute as well the charge of Pauline lunacy. 
All this we plead against the higher criticism. 

(2) We plead, in ae to the argument from the uni- 
formity of nature, admitting that nature’s order is indeed 
established, and nature’s course is indeed uniform, but 
denying that it rs absolutely and unqualifiedly so. We 
deny fate, and a continuous unbroken line of pangenetie 
evolution. Neither in nature nor in history, any more 
than in providence or grace, is it true that ‘all things 


102 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


continue as they were from the beginning of the crea- 
tion.’? Such absolute uniformity as materialistic science 
postulates is a mere assumption, a working hypothesis, 
like the nebular hypothesis, or that of atoms, or vortex- 
rings, and not an induction of science. In opposition to 
the deliverance of the Lord Bishop of Exeter in his 
recent course of Bampton Lectures—viz., that ‘* science, 
as such, can never admit that a miracle has happened,” 
we produce the testimony ef men eminent in science to 
the contrary, a Tait, Stewart, Balfour, Drummond, and 
others, affirming that ‘‘ there are miracles in nature 
equally formidable with miracles in history ;’’ gulfs no 
laws can bridge, in the inorganic and organic worlds 
alike ; events and facts occurrent beyond the range of all 
experience prior to their date, and far transcending all 
experience now. And so we press the great alternatives 
that either science must surrender her own evidence, or 
the resurrection of Christ be accepted. The testimony 
of the senses, on which science herself relies for the 
establishment of all her facts and claims, is identical with 
that for the resurrection, while the secret cause of the 
miraculous in nature is the same as that of the miracu- 
lous in history ; the sensible fact, in the one case, equally 
well attested as in the other, notwithstanding both may 
be beyond the range of a former or present experience, 
and unaccountable by nature’s laws; the passage from 
the mineral to the plant, or from inertia to motion, not 
less than from the grave to the skies. The assertion of 
‘‘the unqualified uniformity of nature’’ is, as Balfour 
justly remarks, ‘‘ one of those assumptions with which 
men start, and which leave us always with unsolved 
problems on our hands, and is contradicted both by ob- 
servation and experiment ; nor is there any scientific 
proof according to which there can be no supernatural 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 103 


interference with the order of nature.’’ Still more. 
Even a Clifford is compelled to say, ‘‘ We cannot be sure 
of the uniformity of nature, or even that we have the 
right conception of it,” and a Huxley has admitted that 
‘‘an absolute generalization, so as to include both past 
and future, without bounds, upon the basis of a brief 
experience (even of five thousand years), is void of scien- 
tific justification.” So long as God exists, an antecedent 
non-experience can never bar the possibility of miracle, 
nor the credibility of human testimony to some ‘ new 
thing’ outside the range of nature’s ordinary course. 
Moreover, the propositions of experience are only ¢nduc- 
te, and can never provide an absolute and exception- 
less rule or law, so long as fate is not enthroned and 
history remains unclosed. Exception is always possible. 
Hume’s argument is built upon the false assumption that 
the propositions of experience exclude the reasonable 
probability of anything outside the ordinary course of 
nature, and, in fact, its possibility, the laws of nature 
being fixed, and efficient canse denied. As against this 
position of Hume, re-enforced by Comte and Mill, in 
’ the interest of mere naturalism, MceCosh, Calderwood, 
and Flint; Porter and Bowen; Jevons, Balfour, and 
Kirkman ; Mozley, Jackson, De Morgan, and Diman, 
the vast body of true scientists, logicians, and metaphy- 
sicians, have recorded arguments unanswerable. 

And in reference to the empirical dictum that “ ex- 
perience” is the measure of truth and sole ground of our 
belief in testimony, we overthrow it by the overthrow of 
the sceptical philosophy of Hume, to which it owes its 
birth, and substitute therefor a true philosophy of belief 
in which the rational and the empirical elements each 
play their proper part, reason as much as sense, cause as 
much as effect, the one reaching to the secret power 


104 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


adequate to give the fact its being, the other to the open 
fact itself—a philosophy of belief which makes the ulti- 
mate ground of our confidence in human testimony not 
experience, but the veracity of consciousness and the 
causal judgment behind which God alone stands respon- 
sible for both, and the trustworthiness of our senses in > 
respect to all events within their jurisdiction, regardless 
of the mode of their occurrence. Either this or universal 
blank nihility. 

And as to the question of ‘‘ probability,’’ we prove 
that even an incipient adverse probability loses all its 
force beneath the power of cumulating tests and testi- 
mony, passing over its fixed limit in the mind, emerging 
in a favorable probability, which, as in the present case, 
waxing from one to five hundred, increases to a certainty 
so strong that no additional amount of testimony could 
augment its value, and that we are fully entitled to invert 
Hume’s celebrated maxim, and assert not only that it is 
infinitely ‘‘ more likely’? that the alleged fact of the 
resurrection of Christ should be true, than it is ‘‘ dzkely’’ 
the testimony to it should be false, but that, under all the 
circumstances, it is absolutely ampossible and incredible ut 
should be false. And, finally, when we remember that 
Hume’s whole attack upon the resurrection and all mira- 
cles—denying the very idea of cause—is at bottom 
nothing more than the application to history of the defi- 
nition given to science by our modern evolutionists, the 
mere ‘‘ observation and classification of the co-existences 
and sequences of material phenomena’’—the ‘‘ dirt-phil- 
osophy,”’ as Fichte called it—rather, that the modern 
evolutionary science, in whose interest [Luxley has repub- 
lished Hume, is the application to science of Hume’s own 
principle in reference to history —viz., that Azstery has 
nothing to do with a supernatural eause, but only with 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 105 


the co-existence and sequence of events in space and 
time due to the ordinary course of history, then no more 
need be said. We detect the sophistical magic at once. 
We see the philosophical manipulation. We discover 
just how it comes to pass that the fact of the resurrection 
itself is denied, as ‘‘ contrary to all experience,’’ even 
the experience of the past, our own, and that of others, 
impossible, incredible, while yet the existing belief of 
the Church, affirmed by experience and which none 
can deny, is admitted, obliged to be accounted for as a 
fraud, a myth, or a mere delusion. The magic is this. 
The rational element in the philosophy of belief is di- 
voreed from the empirical, cause from effect, reason 
from sense, and the necessary logical judgment, or infer- 
ence of the truth, due upon notice of evidence given by 
the senses, is foreclosed, and—both cause and logical 
nexus gone—the contemplation is shut up and locked im 
the sphere of the senses alone, powerless to account for 
the fact by the ordinary course of nature, powerless to 
reach to anything higher, and so is forced to doubt or 
deny the fact because compelled to discredit the proof. 
It is both speculative and practical atheism. God is ex- 
cluded, the credibility of evidence is gauged by the uni- 
formity of nature’s laws, all experience outside of this 
impossible. Against such philosophy our apologetic is 
directed, in order to refute the higher critics, as well 
as evolutionary scientists and theologians, who, follow- 
ing Spinoza, Hume, Kant, Mill, Comte, Hegel, Strauss, 
Bauer, Renan, Keim, and others, deny the resurrection 
altogether, or explain it away. 

And now, while defending the possibility and credt- 
bility of the resurrection as against the sophistry drawn 
from the uniformity of nature’s course, the latest revived 
error we are called to refute comes from the so-called 


106 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


evangelical side itself, and is born of a compromise be- 
tween the Word of God and the claims of evolutionary 
science. It is no less than the doctrine that scientific 
evolution can account for the resurrection of Christ, as 
it pretends to do for the incarnation itself. What is 
attempted is a speculative resolution of the miracle of 
the resurrection into the sporadic development of a sup- 
posed or imagined ‘‘ higher physical law.’’ It is the 
enterprise of the Lord Bishop of Exeter, announced in 
his recent course of lectures on the Bampton foundation, 
the joy of materialistic scientists, so far as this point is 
concerned, and of all who, like Spencer, talk of a 
** reconciliation’ between science and religion. Conced- 
ing all that mechanical and chemical pangenesis would 
ask in this matter, Dr. Temple says: ‘‘ It is quite possi- 
ble that our Lord’s resurrection may be found hereafter 
to be no miracle at all in the scientific sense” (2.e., inex- 
plicable by natural law), ‘‘ but only the natural issue of 
physical laws always at work,’’ and that, in the day of 
universal resurrection, it may be discovered that the 
resurrection of Christ and that of all the dead has been 
‘* brought about by machinery precisely the same in kind 
as that used in governing the world,”’ or, as he further 
says, ‘‘ by the working of a law till the last day quite 
unknown.” This agnostic adjournment of the determi- 
nation of the question on which all salvation depends until 
the day after judgment will hardly meet the necessities 
of either scientists or sinners anxious for certitude as to 
what they must do to be saved. The possible discovery, 
ina far-off day of uncertain decision, that the central 
doctrine of Christianity and crowning credential of the 
claims and mission of its Founder was simply the tempo- 
rary spurt of a physical law till then unknown, will come 
too late, if at all, to serve any good purpose, unless it be 


- 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 107 


the pursuit of biology in a future state. When Chris- 
tian apologetics is driven to such circular motion, in its 
conflict with science, as to petition nature to grant a 
mortgage on the last resurrection to secure the determi- 
nation of the question whether the resurrection of Christ 
was an immediate act of God, or the result of a physical 
law, it is well to remember that nature has no such 
mortgage to give, the last resurrection itself standing in 
need of a like decision. This effort to explain the mira- 
ele by really ‘‘ obliterating” the antithesis between the 
supernatural and natural, or identifying both these factors 
in the hypothesis by some unknown physical law, is the 
last refuge of apologetic weakness doomed to end in the 
denial of the resurrection itself, and of Christ and Chris- 
tianity. If the hypothesis is possible the Word of God 
is false. As well seek to explain the pre-existence of 
the Son of God, His miraculous conception, birth, life, 
ascension, and Second Coming by cosmical process, and 
Pentecost, answer to prayer, and regeneration in the 
same way; as well maintain that God, having made 
matter, or having found it already existing, impressed 
upon it ‘‘ Zaws,”’ and then commissioned it to create and 
redeem a world by its own force. It is evolutionary 
agnostic exegesis, built upon *‘ may,” ‘< yerhaps,’’ and 
‘© don’t know.’’ All that is left for such apologetics to 
do, as they file before the ‘‘Zec¢-Gerst” of our century, 
is to imitate the doomed gladiators, who entered the 
ancient arena saying, as they bowed to the emperor, 
“ Morituri, te salutamus !’’ This conceit of the Bishop 
of Exeter, confounding cause with law, nature with 
God, and acts with processes, 1s not new. Schleier- 
macher, influenced by Kant, ruling out the supernatural 
from the sphere of nature by abolishing the antithesis 
between them, made everything natural, and so excluded 


108 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


the resurrection of Christ from the category of miracles. 
Baur, following Hegel, made everything supernatural, 
in like manner abolishing the same antithesis. Each 
suppressed the alternate factor. Neander, influenced by 
Schelling, mixed the factors together, and made the only 
question one of quantitative difference, or the relation of 
more or less, in each event. Argyll’s extreme position as 
to the ‘‘ reign of law’ tends to the same result. If the 
resurrection, as recorded in Scripture, or the incarnation, 
is to be explained by natural law-—if, as Schleiermacher 
held in his ‘* Doctrine of Faith,’’ ‘‘ there is nothing 
supernatural which cannot be conceived at the same time 
to be natural,’’ then Christ was but one in a series of 
heroes, or world-reformers, in line with Socrates and 
Sakya-Muni, who have appeared from time to time, 
according to the law of necessary development in the 
history of the human race, and the wonders ascribed to 
them are only such as may be explained by physical law, 
or are purely frauds, or myths, or legends, as Matthew 
Arnold would have them. The hypothesis of a higher 
physical law really abolishes the antithesis between the 
supernatural and the natural, and virtually concedes all 
that Hume and Mill would demand for the unbroken 
uniformity of nature’s course. On the contrary, the 
resurrection of Christ was an act of the undivided 
Trinity, a direct act of God, wholly supernatural, in the 
supernatural person of Christ, instantaneous, transcen- 
dent, full of redemptive meaning, and not the issue of a 
physical process ; nor is there anything in the analogy 
used by Christ and Paul as to the springing grain of 
corn or wheat to favor an opposite view. Only by a 
distortion of the meaning of analogy from the resem- 
blance of the relations of things different to the resem- 
blance of things alike can any shadow of support for. 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 109 


this error be found. Science has no ground for teaching 
that the intervention which in nature or history has dis- 
turbed the natural sequence of phenomena is due to 
natural law. The resurrection of Christ was the instan- 
taneous, immediate act of God. 

III. We reply to the various theories devised to account 
for the Church’s belief in the resurrection of Christ, 
apart from the fact of it, and say that neither the fraud 
nor swoon theories deserve much notice, nor that of 
spirit-manifestation. As to the fraud theory, invented 
by the Sanhedrin, formulated by Celsus, and revived by 
Reimarus, it is a self-refuting fable. If the grave was 
plundered, the sacrilege was that of either the friends or 
foes of Jesus. Not of His friends, for this would com- 
promise the veracity and moral character of Christ and 
His apostles. Not of His foes, for Sadducean hate and 
Sanhedrin opposition would have produced the body, 
and extinguished at once the public preaching of the 
resurrection. The supposition that the corner-stone of 
Christianity is a stolen dead man, whose body His friends 
were only concerned to hide, and His enemies dared not 
produce, is too absurd for the utmost credulity to enter- 
tain. It is powerless to explain even the police proceed- 
ings at the grave and the military guard. As to the 
swoon theory, invented by Paulus of Heidelberg, and 
embraced by Schleiermacher, it is not less objectionable. 
Its dextrous way of getting rid of the resurrection by 
simply denying the death of Christ, leaves nothing of 
either morality or miracle to Christianity, and nothing of 
redemption to man. Strauss smote it mortally, saying, 
‘* A half-dead man, crawling about, sickly, in need of 
a physician and a nurse, could never have made upon 
the disciples the impression of His being the Lord of life, 
nor changed their mourning into exultation.’’ Auberlen 


110 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


says: ‘‘It is without defence.’? Ullhorn characterizes 
it as ‘‘ overwhelmed with contempt and scorn on ail 
sides.’ Keim calls it ‘* paltry andabsurd.’’ The spirit- 
manifestation theory, rejected already in germ from 
Paulus to Schleiermacher—a theory whose seeds are 
found in Spinoza, then approved by Hegel, and next 
adopted by Weisse, Lotze, Keim, Geiger, Gritz and 
Noack, reappears as a vain substitute for the vision 
theory, whose doom is already impending. Co-ordinate 
in error with the foregoing, its special demerit is this, 
that while the others involve Christ and His apostles in 
the guilt of moral fraud, this includes the ‘‘ glorified 
Spirit of Jesus’’ in the same crime, through the action of 
the Holy Ghost, and, doing so, dies by that self-contra- 
diction which requires for its postulate the existence of, 
the supernatural—the very thing it was meant to evade. 

As to the vision theory, invented by Celsus, revived 
by Spinoza, perpetuated by Strauss, Bauer, Renan, 
Scholten and many more, and advocated warmly by 
Holsten and the author of the English work entitled 
‘ Supernatural Religion,” it is now the theory generally 
accepted by the higher critics, and deserves special 
notice. It is condensed in one sentence, truly artistic 
and French, made by Renan when describing the loving 
recognition of Christ by Mary Magdalene, on the morn- 
ing of the resurrection : ‘‘ La passion dune hallucinée 
donne au monde un Diew resuscitée!”’ ** The passion 
of an hallucinated woman gives to the world a resusci- 
tated God!” Inlike manner the original Eleven, all the 
disciples, and Paul besides, were the victims of the same 
illusion, honest but mistaken. It is well known that. 
Luther threw his inkstand at the devil, and the black 
mark on the wall is religiously preserved to this hour ! 
Ile really believed he saw Satan before him. He was, 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 111 


however, a morbid visionary then. Sana mens in sano 
corpore is not universal. The senses often deceive. 
The French Camisards, the Jansenistic visionaries, the 
Miinster-men of the Reformation time, the Montanists 
and Maximilla were all deluded. The Maid of Orleans 
~ saw Michael the Archangel just as Francis d’ Assisi be- 
held the Lord as a seraph. Aurelian saw Appolonius 
of Tyana risen from the dead, and Mahomet, Sweden- 
borg, and ‘*‘ Joe Smith’’ had strange revelations made 
to their sense. Not unlike these nervous and excited 
people were the first irrepressible adherents of Jesus, 
who projected their own imaginations into the sphere of 
external fact, mistaking subjective impressions for ob- 
jective truth. If the vision of the Prophet of Islam 
hovered before the Moslem’s mind long after the 
prophet’s death, should not the same be true of the 
Prophet of Galilee? Besides all this, we are told that 
the dogma of the resurrection was borrowed by the Old 
Testament prophets from the Persian eschatology, and 
had already corrupted Christ and Christianity. And, to 
crown all, is it not true that Philip and Stephen, An- 
anias and Cornelius, and many others in the apostolic 
age, rich in visions, had their self-engendered sights 
and dreams? Such stories are found only in the He- 
brew legends and pagan writers like Pliny and Diod- 
orus. Such the vision theory and argument. The 
first Christians were hallucinated—a desperate device, 
contrived by the enemies of the supernatural, to evade 
the difficulty of the empty tomb of Jesus, leaving it still 
tenanted, and seeking to account for the believed appear- 
ings of Jesus. The one foundation on which it rests, and 
by which it seeks to justify itself, is that the disciples 
were unable to distinguish between fancy and fact, or 
between the inward and outward manifestations of 


112 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


Christ. Optic reality was produced by cerebral excite- 
ment. A morbid sensorium begets the phantom of a 
risen Saviour ! 

We reply to all this by denying the postulate on which 
it rests, and affirm 

(1) That the disciples were able to distinguish be- 
tween subjective impression and objective reality. The 
question becomes one of psychological, physiological, 
medical, and historical study, and such study determines 
the case in favor of the literal truth of the Christian 
records. The conditions necessary to hallucination are 
(a), previous ocular beholding of the person whose image 
. inhabits the mind. Imagination can create nothing 
new. It combines only the old. Psychologically, the 
subjective image of Christ, as rzsen, must be precon- 
ditioned by an objective vision of Him in the same 
character ; (6) tension of the mind, or a state of what 
is called mental exaltation ; (¢) confident belief and 
expectation of the event ; (@) absence of all doubt from 
the mind of the visionary. None of these conditions 
existed in the case of the disciples. The last paintul 
impression of Christ on their minds was that of torture 
and disgrace, a spectacle of agony and shame upon the 
bloody cross. S06 far from there being any excitement, 
all was a surrender to the sense of deep and sad aban- 
donment. As to belief or expectation of the resurrec- 
tion, they had none. A more thorough-going set of 
sceptics never existed than those disconsolate, despair- 
ing, crushed, paralyzed, hopeless, mocked, and scat- 
tered sheep, whose Shepherd had fallen a prey to the 
wolf. He who knows what sorrow is can well under- 
stand how the power of sorrow had obliterated from 
their minds, even in so short a time, the memory of His 
latest words. As to doubt, its dark presence made be- 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 113 


lief at first almost impossible. Not one of the condi- 
tions which experts in medical science declare necessary 
to hallucination existed. When, therefore, the author 
of the work entitled ‘‘ Supernatural Religion’”’ informs 
us that *‘ the strong impression that Jesus would rise again 
would create the vision,”’ he indicates to us precisely 
just what there was wanting! And yet more : even 
were the supposed ‘‘ strong impression” a reality, still a 
‘“ vision”? of the risen Lord would not have been a neces- 
sary result. Professor Milligan, of the University of 
Aberdeen, has admirably said, ‘No belief was stronger 
in the early Church than that the Second Coming of 
Christ was soon to take place, and yet the belief led to 
no vision of His appearing.’? Even Keim has admitted 
that ‘‘the disciples, by no means, expected the resurrec- 
tion of Jesus.” 

(2) We reply, again, that the disciples did distinguish 
between illusion and reality. The testimony of the New 
Testament records being granted, this point is established 
beyond the possibility of refutation. They stopped not 
short of ‘“‘many infallible proofs” of the certainty of 
their Lord’s resurrection. Grant that the sense of sight 
may be deceived, yet the probability of deception is di- 
minished in proportion as the number of the senses, ap- 
plied to test the phenomenon in question, is increased. 
And where suspicion is excited, and all care is used, and 
men combined are on their guard, and all unite to test 
the question of reality, deception is impossible. Eyes 
may fail at first, but eyes, ears, and hands—sight, hear- 
ing, touch—cannot fail. The concurrent triple evidence 
of these different senses to the reality of an object unani- 
mously acknowledged by a jury indisposed to credit, and 
doubting much before admitting, the fact, compels either 
the denial of the trustworthiness of all our senses, and 


114 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


thus a repulsion of the only evidence science has to : 
boast of, or the assertion of our certain knowledge and 
belief of the fact alleged. We have no other rule for 
practical life. And this is our case. The three senses 
concurred to prove to the non-hallucinated minds of the @ 
disciples the real bodily presence of the risen Jesus: the 

eye, at first reluctant, as in the case of Mary blinded by 

her tears, yet re-enforced by the ear, on which the soft 

voice of Jesus fell, calling forth her recognition— Rab-  — 
boni !” then, next, the eye and ear, both reluctant at first, 
yet re-enforced by the hand touching Jesus, as in the : 
case of Thomas, eliciting the exclamation and confession, 
‘My Lord and my God !” then, again, the same con- 
current evidence on the part of the Eleven, oft-repeated. 
Even the eyes, without the personal appearing of the 
risen Jesus, were enough for Peter and for John as they 
gazed upon the empty tomb and folded clothes. Rob- 
bers do not wait to fix the wardrobe of the dead. Eyes 
and ears together were enough for weeping Mary. Kyes, 
and ears, and hands, enough for doubting Thomas. And 
all enough for all, the living Saviour in their midst. ‘* Be- 
hold my hands and my feet. Zandle me and see. Tival 
myself! A spirit hath not flesh and bones as ye see me 
have! ‘Thomas, reach hither thy finger, and behold 
my hands; and reach hither thy hand, and thrust it into 
my side, and be not faithless, but believing.”? How ten- 
der! How decisive! Ocular, audible, tangible evi- 
dence, testing and retesting, with the same ever-recur- 
ring result ; what could be more conclusive, what better 
evidence could we ask, what better have? Are we not 
satisfied 2 So far from being deceived by illusion, the 
very first care of the disciples was that they should not 
be so ; their very first fear lest they ght be so. They 
did distinguish between fancy and fact, between phan- > | 


SE ts? 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 115 


tom and reality. They saw, they heard, they handled, 
spake, ate, and companied with their living Lord, who 
appeared to them in fulfilment of His own promise. * 
Thrice the Lord Himself repelled the possibility of all 
deception : once, when Mary, in her tears, mistook Him 
for the ‘‘ Gardener ;’’ once when the Eleven “ were ter- 
tified and affrighted, and supposed they had seen a 
spirit ;’’ once in the crucial case of Thomas. And when 
to all this we add the occurrences of forty days and the 
testimony of ‘‘ above five hundred brethren at once,”’ 
.the cloud-ascension, angels’ words, and the uncontra- 
dicted universal tradition of the charch, dating the resur- 
rection from ‘‘ the third day,” then it is that the hollow- 
hess and emptiness of the vision theory, in the case of 
the first disciples, become manifest, and we learn to ap- 
preciate the force of that witness-bearing formula of 
John, who speaks in the name of all the rest of the dis- 
ciples, ‘What our eyes have seen, and our ears have 
heard, and our hands have handled of the Living Word, 
that declare we unto you.”? 


——_—_—_—_+@+—_____. 


Our apologetic is not yet discharged from its task. 
Our adversaries reject the ‘‘ four gospels,’’ and especial- 
ly the ‘‘ fourth gospel,’’ so excluding the remarkable 
testimony of John, and confine us to the case of Paul. It 
is said that Paul admits himself to be a visionary. He 


*The word ‘‘ appear” is never applied to the Father nor to the Holy 
Ghost, but only to Christ, the incarnate Son, and in every case de- 
notes His ocular manifestation in bodily presence before men, 
The term Kvpioc, ‘‘ Lord,” is never applied to Him except as risen 
from the dead. It involves and is grounded in His resurrection, “ Our 
Lord Jesus Christ?’ means a risen Saviour. Peter argues this, Acts 2 36, 
and Paul delights in it, 1 Cor. 1:1-10; Rom. 8 : 34. 


116 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


speaks of ‘‘ visions and revelations,’ ‘‘ trance,’’ and 
‘rapture to the third heaven,”’ and ecstasy, ** whether 
in or out of the body” he ‘‘ could not tell.” Appeal is 
made, furthermore, to such expressions as ‘‘ When it 
pleased God to reveal His Son in me,”’ and “* God, who 
commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined 
into our hearts.?? More: it is said that, from the time 
of Stephen’s death, he had compunctions of conscience, 
which issucd in a morbid state of mind, and, assisted 
by more than usual excitement and fatigue, produced 


the vision near Dasmascus. Ardent, nervous, moody, 


and self-punctured, a believer in the resurrection from 
the dead, it needed only some special evolutionary shock 
to disturb unduly the grey matter of his brain, in order 
to develop into outward fact what now was struggling 
for objective birth. The opportunity arrived. The 
Syrian ride was too much; remorse was too strong ; 
sunstroke or epilepsy came to help; the day was too 
hot ; the imagination too vivid, and the strain too great. 
The optic and auricular nerves tingled and vibrated be- 
yond all bounds as he neared the Damascene gate, when, 
thrown from his horse, he fancied that he really saw 
‘“‘ Jesus of Nazareth’’ transfigured in the sunlight, and 
heard His voice from heaven. It was allillusion! Some 
crities deny the Syrian ride altogether, and confine Paul’s 
experience to purely psychological phenomena. Others 
combine the external and internal. | 

To all this we reply, (1) that, as in the case of the early 
disciples, so here, all the conditions necessary to halluci- 
nation were wanting. There is not a line in all the his- 
tory to show that Paul was of a saturnine mood or con- 
stitutionally given to visions, nor a line to intimate that, 
for six or seven years previous to his conversion, he was 
the victim of remorse, as Canon Farrar, following the 


EE 


lr 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 117 


higher erities, wrongly holds. Up to the last hour of 
his Syrian ride he verily believed that what he did he 
‘ought to do,’’? and was ‘‘ exceeding mad ;’’ (2) that 
there was nothing in the times or circumstances in Pales- 
tine or Syria that could lead him to expect a vision of 
such a kind ; (3) that there is no similarity between any 
of his visions and those of Swedenborg, or Luther, or 
d’ Assisi, or the Camisards, or the Montanists, all which 
were isolated, unverifiable, and without any moral effect 
upon the persons seeing them, or upon the history of 
mankind ; the supposed analogies are not analogous ; the 
homologies do not homologate ; (4) that the divine ‘‘ rev- 
elations and visions’? granted him were such as already 
had been foretold in Joel’s prophecy, the whole New 
Testament period being but the unfolding of Old Testa- 
ment eschatology, or what should ‘* come to pass in the 
last days,’’ and therefore these ‘‘ revelations and visions”’ 
were different from the hallucinations of a morbid or 
diseased mind ; (5) that Paul himself distinguishes be- 
tween subjective and objective visions, or what he calls 
visions ‘‘ from” the Lord, and visions ‘‘ ef” the Lord, 
as also between the teimple-trance and the rapture to the 
third heaven, on the one hand, and that outward visible 
beholding of the risen Jesus, on the other hand, which 
antedated all his other visions. Still further, we reply 
(6) that, in the Galatian passage, to which such constant 
appeal is made, and on which such reliance is placed— 
‘‘ When it pleased God to reveal His Son a me’’— 
Paul specifies both an inward and an outward revelation 
of Christ, and puts the inward last—viz., (@) a pre-natal 
separation to the apostleship, by the good pleasure of 
God ; (b) a post-natal ‘‘ cad” to that apostleship ; (c) an 
accompanying revelation of God in Christ to his soul, an 
inward work of grace. The argument, therefore, of the 


118 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


critics, which restrains this passage to a subjective inter- 
pretation, is unhistorical, illogical, uncritical, unexegeti- 
cal, inasmuch as every apostle must not only have ‘*‘ seen 
the Lord’’ objectively, but have been ‘‘called’’ objec- 
tively as well, ocular sight and audible voice of Jesus, 
being the two great pre-conditions of the apostolic office. 
‘Am I not an apostle ? Have I not seen the Lord ?”’ 
‘He called me by His grace ;”’ (7) that, in his letter to 
the Corinthian church, he co-ordinates his vision ‘ of ” 
the Lord near Damascus, in kind, with all the previous 
ocular beholdings of Christ, and marks it as the ‘* dast,’’ 
and unrepeated, in a series of apocalypses, appearings, 
unveilings, or personal showings of Christ to His disci- 
ples, after His passion, affirming that even as Cephas, 
James, the twelve, the five hundred, so he too had 
‘* seen”? the Lord, with bodily sight, as the Greek term 
imports ; ‘‘ Zas¢ of all, He was seen of me, also, as of one 
born out of due time”—7.e., six years after all the rest ; 
and (8) he appeals to the co-existing testimony of these 
many witnesses, three hundred of whom were still liv- 
ing contemporaneously with himself, twenty-five years 
after the event, so that any sceptic might inquire if 
what he said were true about the risen Christ ; evidence 
exposed so long to every test of criticism, yet unover- 
thrown! In a true summary—not hearsay—he historizes 
not alone the faith, but the facts of the times, and chal- 
lenges their contradiction. He does it under the most 
solemn sense of his responsibility to God and men, shrink- 
ing with horror from the thought, that in the judgment 
day he should be ‘‘ found” a ‘‘ false witness,’’ and as 
solemnly declares that if his testimony is not true, then 
both he, and the religion, and the Saviour he proclaims, 
and the faith of all believers, are unmitigated frauds, to 
be abhorred by every honest man. And for twenty- 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 119 


five years he does this, closing up at last and sealing 
his testimony with his blood. Such the evidence we get 
from only two of the four letters granted us as genuine. 
And (9) only to refer a moment to the Acts, which the 
critics use in order to sustain their theory, but we to 
‘overthrow it. Never does Paul once refer to his Dam- 
ascene sight of Jesus in the terms he uses when speaking 
of his visions “‘ from” the Lord. On the castle-stairs he 
tells the crowd it was his first and last outstanding vision 
‘Sof’? the Lord ; that it came upon him from without ; 
that its glory seared his eye-balls, and its voice subdued 
him into meekness, as a helpless child. To Agrippa he 
describes it as a personal apocalypse of Christ, whose 
splendor was above the solar beam at noon, and repeats 
the words of Jesus. And (10)—to return to the Corin- 
thian letter—like the trained logician, he meets the univer- 
sal negative of the Corinthian sceptics who said ‘* there 
is no resurrection of the dead,’’ by the particular affirm- 
ative that ‘‘ Christ is risen ;’? and reduces the whole de- 
bate to two pairs of great alternatives, (@) either the 
bodies of believers shall rise from their graves, in the 
victory, glory, beauty, and likeness of Christ, at His 
second coming, or Christ, the Head, is not risen ; and, 
as already said, (0) either Christ is risen, or Christianity 
is a gigantic lie, and—in spite of all shallow pretences 
and vain theories about illusion, innocent mistake, and 
swoon, and spirit-form, and what not ?—the whole college 
of apostles, himself among them, are simply public and 
inexcusable liars, ‘‘ false witnesses,’’ because testifying 
that God raised up Christ, whom He raised not up, if so 
be that the dead rise not: ‘‘and if Christ be not raised, 
your faith is vain, ye are yet in your sins ; then they 
also who are fallen asleep in Christ are perished,”’ and 
we, whose ‘‘ hope” is only here, in this world, are Or 


120 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


all men most miserable !’? Not once does he confound 
the inward with the outward vision. The fact of a risen 
Jesus was the Archimedean fulerum by which he over- 
turned the Greek scepticism. It is his preaching and 
his testimony everywhere that ‘‘ Christ should suffer 
and be the first to rise from the dead, and show light to ~ 
the people and the Gentiles.”? And when ridiculed 
and repelled by Festus as a literary crank, he vindicates 
his testimony as the word of ‘‘ truth and soberness,’’ not 
the gush of mere excitement, nor a madman’s dream, 
but the proclamation of a mighty fact, of which the 
world had heard, and which the king himself well knew — 
was *‘ not done in a corner.”’ 

And now in leaving this theory, and in view of these 
considerations, 1 think we have the right to ask, Is it 
rational to suppose that this honest, maddened, and dis- 
mounted cavalier of the Sanhedrin, whose breath was 
odored with the slaughter of God’s saints, could, under 
the foreclosure of all examination of the claims of Jesus, 
believing Him accursed of God by hanging on a tree—a _ 
false Messiah—and under lack of all illusion or remorse, 
suddenly reverse his former convictions, accept the new 
faith, and counting all things loss, go forth, flaming with. 
an inextinguishable zeal and love for Christ, preaching 
everywhere, “‘ It is Christ that died—yea, rather that is 
risen again,’ himself enduring all manner of reproach, 
privation, and persecution for twenty-five long years, 
encountering martyrdom at last, or, even because one day — 
he saw a phantom near Damascus, or, if you please, be- 
cause he was a nervous, moody, morbid, conscience-punc- 
tured, seriously inclined, solemnly religious, and_hal- 
lucinated crank? I say it is irrational. It is insulting. 


It is absurd. It is for you to judge, from the evidence 


admitted, whether these modern higher critics, with their 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 121 


huge ‘encyclopedic learning,” shapeless, one-eyed, 
and blind, monstrum horrendum, informe, imgens, cur 
‘lumen ademptum, have convicted Paul of lunacy, or 
whether there is any other real explanation of the facts 
than that ‘‘ the man Paul is the practical demonstration 
of the resurrection of Jesus from the dead.’? Absurdity 
or miracle are the only alternatives here. 

The critics, then, have not ‘‘ accounted for’’ the 
Church’s belief in the resurrection, apart from the fact 
of the resurrection. Neither by the robbery of the 
grave, nor by the swoon of the sufferer, nor by the 
erotic sentimentalism of a visionary woman, nor by an 
epidemic of delusion, nor by the morbid brooding of a 
visionary man, nor by a spirit-fraud effected by the Holy 
Ghost, can they explain the wonderful phenomena to 
which the resurrection, or, if you please, the Church’s 
belief of it, gave birth—the sudden change of conduct in 
the disciples, from that of deep depression to that of 
boldest courage and exulting joy, the opposition of the 
~ Sadducees and Sanhedrin, the strangely simultaneous 
sight of Jesus by five hundred, the cessation of His per- 
sonal appearings precisely at the close of forty days, the 
origin of the New Testament church, Stephen’s death 
and Paul’s conversion. As little can they explain the 
whole body of New Testament doctrine, order, and wor- 
ship ; the persecutions of three hundred years ; the sym- 
bols of the resurrection in the catacombs of Rome; the 
wheat-sheaf—anchor, bellied sail of ship full-pressing into 
port ; the palm branch ; the invariable standing posture on 
the martyr-slabs, and the hand pointing to heaven ; the 
silent eloquence of the dead confessors of Jesus celebrat- 
ing His triumph over death in their very tombs; the 
victories of eighteen centuries without a worldly weapon ; 
the experience of believers, and the mightiest moral revo- 


122 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


lution ever known to history in the fact of Christendom. 
One circumstance alone condemns all these wild theories. 
It is that, while professing to account for the belief of 
the Church, they need an hallucinated church in order 
to account for them ! 


Lixtent of the Luidenee. 


A word must be allowed as to the ewtent of the evi- 
dence of the resurrection of Christ. It is not confined 
to the New Testament records. Four thousand years of 
preparation for it, from the first utterance of the penalty 
of death for sin to its exhaustion in the dying and the 
rising of the Son of God, and the gift of life eternal, 
were more than a presumptive proof that history one 
day would be enriched and thrilled by its occurrence. In 
advance of the fact, not only type and ceremony fore- 
shadowed it, but the voice of the Son of God Himself 
was heard through the prophets, anticipating the great 
event—‘‘ Thy dead men shall live ; my dead body shall 
arise ; awake and sing, ye dwellers in the dust, for the 
dew of herbs is thy dew, and the earth shall cast forth 
the dead.”? ‘‘I will ransom them from death. I will 
redeem them fromthe grave.’? And the exultant voice 
of faith was heard responding, ‘‘ My flesh also shall rest 
in hope.”’ ‘* Thou wilt not abandon me to the grave.”’ 
‘’ He will swallow up death in victory !’’ closing with 
that weirdly solemn word, ‘‘ Many from among the sleep- 
ers in the dust of the earth shall awake ; these shall be 
to everlasting life, but those shall be to shame and ever- 
lasting contempt !” 

But wider still is the evidence. All that follows as a 
result of the fact enters also into the proof of the fact 
—the origin and history of the Church ; the whole New 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 123 


Testament Scripture, every doctrine of it tied expressly 
to the central fact of a risen Jesus ; our regeneration, 
ow justification, our sanctification, our life, faith, hope, 
prayer, praise, and service ; our preaching, and our fel- 
lowship and consolation ; our comfort on the bed of 
death ; the resurrection of our bodies, and, still more, 
the deliverance of a groaning creation, and the final re- 
genesis of all things—I say this whole body of doctrine, 
order, and worship, this whole system of being and of 
knowledge, put under the headship of a risen Christ, and 
sealed by two perpetual sacraments, one grounded in His 
death, the other in His resurrection, and linked together 
by a monumental day, the whole plexus of things in 
ages past and to come, Himself the nexus of all, is 
valid proof of the historic fact that Christ is risen from 
the dead. In Him all relations converge. His risen 
person binds all things. Ontological, His person reaches 
back to His pre-temporal existence, and His union with 
the Father ; cosmological, He made all things, and still 
Ile rules the world ; biological, it is His life that lives in 
all the Church ; eschatological, He points to future times 
and to eternity, where His glory will be seen in every- 
thing that moves, or breathes, or lives. He is the union- 
point of God and man, of heaven and earth, eternity and 
time. “‘ By Him are all things!” Such a system is un- 
imaginable by man. Only God could give it being. 


The Find Alternatives. 


Our task is done. All that remains is to state the two 
pairs of alternatives our apologetic presents, and then to 
close. (1) Hither Jesus Christ is risen from the dead, 
or we have no proof that Jesus Christ ever lived. The 
testimony to His resurrection is the same testimony we 


124. DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


have for His incarnation, life, and death—the testimony 
of the senses. If the supernatural character of the fact 
invalidates the testimony of the senses to His resurrec- 
tion, it invalidates their testimony to His incarnation as 
well. The denial of His resurrection involves the denial 
of His miraculous conception and of His birth, as also 
of His life and death. It necessitates the extinction of 
Christ and Christianity. The alternatives remain : either 
Jesus rose from the dead, or you have no proof that 
Jesus ever lived. (2) Hither Jesus rose from the dead, or 
there is no proof that anything exists. The supernatural 
cause that attaches to the miracle of the resurrection at- 
taches also to the miracle of nature. Vain the effort of 
evolutionary science to evade the issue here, and plead 
agnosticism, or declare that science has ‘‘ nothing to do 
with origin or cause of things.’’ It is bound to explain 
the fact of nature. The testimony of the senses is the 
prime testimony of science herself. The production of 
life alone, in nature, the passage from the inorganic to 
the organic world, is a fact confessed as battling every 
effort to explain it by natural law. If the supernatural 
character of this and other like facts where the secret 
cause is unseen, and hidden process unknown, invalidates 
the testimony of ‘the senses to the visible fact itself, then 
the same testimony is invalidated everywhere else, wher- 
ever the secret cause remains concealed. The senses are 
untrustworthy for all the supposed facts of science and 
nature alike. Certitude is gone. The whole inner foun- 
dation also for our knowledge of the external world is 
gone. Not agnosticism nor scepticism, but absolute nihil- 
ism is the last and logical result. All is illusion, ideal, 
nothing real. The alternatives remain. Either Jesus 
rose from the dead, or science has no basis and no fact 
established beyond dispute. A risen Christ or nothing. 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 125 


The denial of the principles that prove the resurrection 
is the denial of all science, philosophy, history, morality, 
and religion. But science, philosophy, history, and 
morality have something fixed and established, and veri- 
fied, too, by means of the identical principles here in de- 
bate. Therefore the resurrection of Christ is a firmly 
established historical fact. 


Christ Eisen is the Refutation of all Error. 


Thus does Christ risen from the dead refute all the 
errors of a ‘‘ vain philosophy”’ and of a ‘‘ science falsely 
so called.’’ His resurrection refutes atheism and panthe- 
ism alike, for it requires a personal God, by whose power 
the resurrection is effected. It refutes deism, for it pro- 
claims the boundless interest a loving God takes in the 
affairs of men. It refutes scientific naturalism, which 
chains all things to fate and uniform law, making 
miracles impossible. It refutes agnosticism by giving 
us the knowledge of Godin nature and salvation. It re- 
futes materialism by teaching the immortality of the soul, 
an Kternal Spirit whose presence in the world is the re- 
sult of triumph over death, and whose presence in the 
souls of men secures the resurrection of believers to 
eternal glory. It refutes idealism by the objective real- 
ism of the person and the work of Christ, and of things 
eternal and unseen. It refutes empirical scepticism by 
the historic demonstration of the fact that all our know]l- 
edge isnot derived from the senses or reflection, and 
that our experience is not the sole ground of faith or 
measure of reality. In short, it refutes both the false 
postulates of our adversaries and all the arguments by 
which they are supported, and presents to us a living 
Christ, the ‘‘ power” of God as against all natural force 


126 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION Of THE FAITH. 


and false science, and the ‘‘ Wisdom”? of God as against 
all world philosophy, and world-religion, too, One ‘‘in 
whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knovwl- 
edge,’’ and we ‘‘ complete in Him.” 


Universal Victory not yet. 


Do not think, however, that a successful apologetic 
will terminate the great conflict in which we are to-day 
engaged. Spinoza and Hume, answered, ever needing 
answer, and underlying all false systems, will live on till 
the Lord comes. They are truly representative men. 
Every generation must fight its own battle and learn its 
own lesson. The office of apologetic is not to convert, 
nor always to convince, the adversary. Itis ‘‘ set for 
the defence of the gospel.’’ Its one object is to reduce 
the debate to the two alternatives of miracle or absurd- 
ty, and then call on every man to choose for himself 
between a philosophy, science, and criticism, on the one 
hard, which substitute nature for God, man for Christ, 
doubt for certitude, fraud for honesty, lies for truth, and 
the power of delusion for the power of the Holy Ghost ; 
and, on the other hand, a philosophy, science, and criti- 
cism which acknowledge God, exalt Christ, repose con- 
fidence in the trustworthiness of our faculties and senses, 
credit the testimony of God, and guard the foundation 
and building alike of all true knowledge and religion. 

A choice must be made. And the choice once made, 
the battle will still go on, from age to age, as before. It 
is part of that wayy aGavaros of which Plato speaks, 
that ‘‘ immortal conflict’? which is the inheritance of 
time and the agony of mankind, and never can cease 
until the power of falsehood is broken. Choose we 
must, and fight we must. It is in direct connection 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 127 


with his great apologetic for the Resurrection of Jesus 
from the dead, Paul’s imperial voice is heard exclaim- 
ing and exhorting: ‘* Watch ye; stand fast in the 
Juith ; quit you like men; be strong’’—the voice of 
a brave commander inspiring his troops! Now, as then, 
there are ‘‘ false apostles, deceitful workers, transform- 
ing themselves into the apostles of Christ. And no 
marvel ; for Satan himself is transformed into an angel 
of light ! ? It is the old story over again in our times, 
The ad of this age circles back to its beginning. 


Lischatology and Apologetics. 


It is not without the deepest significance that the chief 
apologetic of the Christian faith is eschatological, or 
that the “last things ’—death, resurrection, the reap- 
pearing Christ, and the gift of life, in the resurrection of 
the bodies of the saints, and the new creation— should be 
the very ‘‘ first eet to engage our attention, and 
stand in the front line oi the Ghatatian defences. Accom- 
plishments of prophecy they are, themselves prophetic, 
for the contents of the prophecy are not exhausted. 
The promise of life fulfilled itself, first of all, com- 
pletely in the person of the Son of God made man, at 
His first coming, assuming man’s responsibilities, maa 
who thereby Bone in His death a Redeemer from sin 
and death and in His resurrection a Redeemer from death 
and the grave. It fulfils itself, next, in the person of 
His church, made one with Him, oienen faith, first 
operating inwardly by the gift of life to Saag aie 
and progressing through ihe ages, till it reaches its com- 
pletion in the resurrection of the just, and passes over 
to eternal glory. The awaking of the ‘“‘ many bodies of 
the saints that slept?’ and the shower of life “ shed forth” 


128 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


at: Pentecost were the first effects of a risen, reappearing, 
and ascended Jesus, under which the crucified and pros- 
trate Church, ‘‘ planted into the likeness of’ His death,”’ 
was ‘‘ planted,’’ also ‘‘ into the likeness of His resurrec- 
tion,’’ and revived; all this a type and pledge of still 
another great outpouring, at another reappearing, at- 
tended by a wider and a larger resurrection of the dead 
in Christ. So did the present age begin, with a resur- 
rection of the saints and a baptism by the Holy Ghost. 
So shall it end, and another age begin, salvation all vic- 
torious, amid the scenes of judgment, opening the vista 
of a better future age. Each end of every age un- 
folds itself in a new development, and, so on, unto 
‘ages of ages.” The defence of a risen Jesus is, 
therefore, the defence of the present life and future 
resurrection of the Church—‘‘ life from among the 
dead’’—in every sense; the defence of her “living 
hope,” the certainty of her complete deliverance, and 
the splendor of her fullreward. Full of immortality and 
holiness is this thrilling expectation. There is no true 
apologetic, as there is no true piety, that has not the 
blood of eschatology in its veins. The life of the true 
Church is just the daily expression of the fellowship of 
Christ’s sufferings, the power of His resurrection, and 
her inevitable loving, longing, and looking for His reap- 
pearing. It is her palpitating pulse. It is written so on 
every page of the New Testament, and was the great 
character of the apostolic church—a church Dorner has 
called ‘‘ predominantly eschatological,’ as we know it 
was predominantly apologetical. So has it been, in 
every age, wherever the Church has ‘‘ witnessed a good 
confession’’ for Christ. This expectation keeps the gar- 
ment clean, the loins girded, the lamps trimmed and 
burning, the believer panoplied with helmet, sword, 


APOLOGETIC FOR THE RESURRECTION OF CHRIST. 129 


shield, and breastplate, a tried Smyrnean and not a com- 
promising, self-applauding, rich, statistical, and lukewarm 
Laodicean. And, as it was in the beginning, so once 
again will it be in the end of this age, as the conflict 
waxes to its height and optimistic folly dies too late. 
Apologetics and eschatology will stand side by side in 
the defence of truth whenever a spark of the real life of 
Christ is found, and these two supernatural watchwords 
ofa living Church, ‘‘ The Lord ts Risen!” « Behold, 
He comes in clouds,’ will strike the hour when, in 
presence of the reappearing Lord, Spinoza and Hume— 
the very etymology of whose names reminds us of the 
thorns that pierced Him and the ground that sepulchred 
His body—will receive their final answer, and the great 
debate will close ! Then, not only will crowns adorn 
the heads of the just, but “* The teachers shail shine as 
the brightness of the Jirmament, and they that have 
turned many to righteousness as the stars JSorever and 
eoer,”? 


LECTURE V. 


Christianity and Civilization: the Argument from 
Civilization Introduced and Developed as to the 
Indwidual. 


BY REV. SYLVESTER F. SCOVEL, PRESIDENT OF THE UNI- 
VERSITY OF WOOSTER, WOOSTER, OHIO. 


No matter, now, how the world became barbarous. 
It is to be civilized. A portion of the work is already 
done, and the remainder is in rapid progression. We 
are at the point of sufficient advancement to learn some- 
thing of what has been effected and how it has been 
accomplished, and thus in position to use what we can 
learn in hurrying the whole work to its completion. 
Never was the responsibility of correctly reading the 
lessons of the history of civilization so grave. A mis- 
take would be not only a bad philosophy of history, but 
might lead to putting out the very eyes of civilization 
and quenching the hope of the race. A right under- 
standing cannot but put us forward toward the great 
goal longed for, and dreamed of, and consecrated by 
promise and prophecy. 

In so interesting a territory past and so inviting a 
future, and amid the multiform factors in so complex a 
result as that we call civilization, it is no wonder that we 
find rival claimants for the position of primal and con- 
trolling force. There is constant need that the place and 
power of our common Christianity as the great civilizer 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION, 131 


should be demonstrated and exhibited. For example, 
a noted unbeliever thus raised the question, in December 
last : ‘‘ For thousands of years men have been asking, 
How shall we civilize the world? How shall we protect 
life, liberty, property, and reputations ? How shall we 
do away with crime and poverty ? These are questions 
that are asked by every thoughtful man and woman. 
The business we will attend to now is, How are we to 
civilize the world? What priest shall I ask? What 
sacred volume shall I search ? What oracle shall 1 con- 
sult? At what shrine shall I bow to find out what is to 
be done?’ (Address of Robert Ingersoll, ‘‘ Which 
Way,”’ Cleveland, O., December 11th, 1884.) 

The remarkable thing is that, after such multitudinous 
questioning, he has not a syllable of reply to make, and 
consumes nearly two hours in making that fact evident. 
And another remarkable thing is that, having turned 
away silenced by the recoil of his own interrogatories, he 
seeks to fill the void with vociferous declamation against 
the clear answer of Christianity. He represents it as 
having no message for the inquiring world, and limits its 
functions to teaching that “all that is to be done in this 
world is to get ready for the next.”” He says of this 
busy religion, which has its ringing ethical message 
ready for every man and for every moment of every 
man’s life, and for every power of every possible com- 
bination of men, that it ‘‘ treats time as a kind of dock 
on the shores of eternity, and treats men as though they 
were congregated there sitting on their trunks and wait- 
ing for the Gospel ship to come and take them on 
board.’’ So profound a misunderstanding is most re- 
markable for even a ‘‘ stranger in Jerusalem.’’ I cannot 
but think that if the Master were in that ship it would 
make no landing at that. port. Rather would the hail be 


132 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


answered by the message, ‘‘ Lift up your eyes and look 
upon the fields, for they are white to the harvest, and 
he that reapeth veceiveth wages.” What ineffable stu- 
pidity (to say nothing of the criminality) for a man to 
be crying out in the closing decades of the nineteenth 
Christian century, when the world is bounding forward 
under the influence that was turning it ‘‘ upside down” 
in its first century, that Christianity has no answer to 
make to the question, ‘‘ How shall we civilize the 
world 2? Open your eyes, man! The work itself is far 
advanced ; while the principles of it are all known and 
the main methods are wrought out, why—Christianity 
has nearly civilized you ! 

Those who deny Christianity’s power to civilize, and 
assert their independence of it, are really built on its 
foundations and are breathing its atmospheres. They use 
in their assaults the ideas—nay, the very words—which 
Christianity has coined for them. Every ringing appeal 
they make against religion vibrates with tones that were 
never heard before Christ, and ave never heard where 
He is not known. The standards of judgment to which 
they pay deference (either in their ignorance or their 
arrogance) are divine standards, and they can only move 
in the grooves which Christianity has prepared for them. 
The winds of its great influences play with their voci- 
ferations, and awaken echoes which are filled with the 
name they hate. Civilization is shown to be the prod- 
uct of Christianity by the very name we give that form 
of it which is regnant to-day. Our religion has wrought 
itself as distinctly into our civilization as it has into the 
measurement of the centuries, and in each case the 
world’s confession of the fact is explicit and beyond 
recall. 

I scarcely need delay to attempt any precise definition 


— ee 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 133 


ot the place of this argument in a scheme of apologetics. 
It is external rather than internal, and historical rather 
than critical. It is an argument not so much for the 
Christian book as. for the Christian life. It is an appli- 
cation of the Master’s major test, ‘ By their fruits shall 
ye know them.” 

But the very statement of its place and nature secures 
the rank of the argument. It is a high rank certainly. 
There can be nothing better to prove a cause than the 
character of its effect. And this whole line of argument — 
proves whatever it proves for the religion as a whole. 
Fruit implies vitality in the tree, though there be here 
and there a dead twig. The waning snows of a severe 
winter mean the whole sun. All great social changes 
clearly traced to Christianity constitute an argument for 
its whole inner life by the outer life it creates. 

It cannot but be an attractive argument, because it 
deals with things that are concrete and level to observa- 
tion and portions of our own experience. It is far more 
empirical than speculative, and its elements are large 
and visible facts and movements. It does not depend 
on the age of a document, as proved by ‘‘ Elohim’? or 
** Jehovah,” or by archaic forms of certain words. It 
does not lie in the apex of one letter or the length of 
another. 

It is a constantly increasing and obtrusive argument. 
It grows with every century-breath of Christianity. It 
is beginning to be so clear through the vistas of the 
nearer and of the remoter past that history has become 
the storehouse of apologetics. Since what Christianity 
has done has been exclusively done (¢.¢., whenever it is 
absent the effect is absent), and since it has been uni- 
formly done (¢.e., whenever it is present the effect is 
present), and since it has been done with “‘ concomitant 


134 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


variation” (¢.e., with an intensity of effect varying 
exactly as its own intensity varies), the conclusion is 
irresistible that Christianity is the cause of civilization. 

And I need scarcely note the scope of the argument. 
It includes everything in religion, of course. It em- 
braces almost everything valuable in our collective life, 
and all in our individual life which is directly related to 
that (which, again, is nearly everything). It may well 
contain the testimony of principles (a sort of a priory 
study of what Christianity is fitted to produce and must 
produce), with the testimony of the facts (the @ poste- 
rioré and inductive discovery of what Christianity has 
produced), and thus it must cover the whole philosophy 
of religion and its whole history. To be exact, it should 
be comparative, and hence should cover the whole terri- 
tory of the known operations of religions, and religious 
ideas, and religious fragments and comminglings, which 
is, again, the whole history of mankind and a central 
and soul history. The mission-territory of all religious 
propagations are its surface, and all the race-transforma- 
tions are its materials. To be complete it should be 
polemic, and all contestants for its claimed results should 
be met and gainsaid. But this would be to take into 
consideration the'whole discussion represented by Buckle 
and repeated in the thousand echoes of popular infidel- 
ity. By many avenues and in many forms the argument 
will go forward, as it is now going, until all this territory 
will be made tributary in a systematic and comprehen- 
sive way. 

A moment as to the arrangement of the argument. 
One might take the elements of our nature and, begin- 
ning with the religious elements of civilization, demon- 
strate how deeply this element has characterized civiliza- 
tions, and compare the Christian with other civilizations 


~~  ee 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 135 


in the doctrines which control and mould it. Selecting, 
next, the moral element, the dominance of the ethical 
element in Christianity might be shown. Coming to the 
intellectual elements of civilization, it might be shown 
how these are provided for in the stimulating force of 
our holy religion. Looking out upon the social elements 
of civilization, the noblest of them would be found trace- 
able to the same great source. And then, considering 
the material elements, the review could be finished by 
proving that both health and wealth came by and in pro- 
portion to Christianity. Or the scheme might be based 
upon an inquiry concerning the relation of Christianity to 
the sources of civilization—the original powers productive 
of betterment in mankind—morals, motives, laws, etc. ; 
next, to the erdteria of civilization—national progress, 
arts, and sciences, general education, position of women, 
charity, international relations, ete.; then to the prob- 
lems of civilization—land tenure, distribution of wealth, 
employers and employés, social legislation ; and, finally, 
to the Aistory of civilization—when and where its effects 
emerge, ete. | 

But a possibly less fragmentary and still simpler way 
will be to proceed not by the elements of civilization (as 
we might pick up minerals, and by analysis locate them 
in our cabinets), but by beginning at the point of life— 
the ¢ndividual—and tracing the civilizing power and 
progress of religion through all his greater relations in 
the life of the state, the life of soctety, and the race-life [ 

As man emerges into the larger spaces, one after 
another, I think it must be seen that Christianity, the 
civilizer, accompanies him, proves his sufficient mentor, 
and indicates the point of solution in all the great prob- 
lems which arise from these divinely-ordered relations. 
Our endeayor would be to note (were the scheme to be 


136 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


realized) most of the great departments in which the 
teachings and influences of Christianity come to the sur- 
face in that whole broad region we call civilization. 
There can be for us no digging in the strata, but there 
may be a diligent examination of the outcroppings. 
Proceeding from the individual onward, we enter upon 
the real life of mankind, and discover an organism like 
that of a tree or animal life developing from a cell. 
From the individual outward we must go, because life 
develops that way. All relations interact. The indi- 
vidual is never the same when the race changes, nor the 
race the same while the individual changes. Nor is any- 
thing between the two, from centre to circumference, 
the same when there is change at either end of the 
radius. History and fact will have it thus, and Chris- 
tianity must have it thus, since its whole spirit is to con- 
sider man as never less than man, even if there be bill- 
ions of him ; and it makes nothing of the race-problems 
when held away from the facts of individual life. Let 
the relations, then, overlap as they may, they will not 
be interfering, but only ¢ntersphering, as the strands do 
when a rope is being twisted. 

And let us remember, further, that this position is 
claimed for Christianity (the civilizer), not as a product 
of development from the human soul, nor as a recollec- 
tion of broken echoes, nor as an eclecticism from all 
religions (rejecting most), nor as a syncretism of all 
(accepting almost anything). No! The Christianity 
we mean is revealed, authorized, and a system in itself 
contained. | 

The large claim is made fearlessly, because the relation 
between the product affirmed and the elements of power 
in question is strictly proportionate. Immense effects 
are expected of no other than immense forces. And 


~~ eS ee ee ae 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 137 


there is as full and adequate a proportion in Christianity 
to the demands of the work of civilizing the world as 
there is between the miracle of spring’s new mantle and 
its causes. Silent mainly, but deep and pervasive, it 
can easily become universal and effect vast changes. 

Nor in this argument is Christianity to be taken by 
and large as an intangible and indefinable somewhat, 
either afraid or ashamed to give itself a local habitation 
oraname. It can endure dates and specifications in any 
indictment, and freely gives them to support its claims. 
It freely acknowledges all sorts of individual weaknesses 
and clinging errors, and even secular evil tendencies. It 
asks only the justice of discrimination which will show 
that Christianity is not always to be identified with either 
the acts or doctrines of those who ‘‘ profess and call 
themselves Christians.” I mean to call that Christianity 
which is embraced in the ordinary evangelical scheme, 
such as characterized the primitive church, such as may 
justly be considered the consensus of the reformers, such 
as to-day finds expression in the nine articles of the 
Evangelical Alliance, and exponents in the great co- 
working instrumentalities of Christendom—bBible and 
tract societies, and in the numberless organizations for 
practical charity, and reform, and social beneficence. 
And yet this Christianity stands close enough to Liberal- 
ism, on the one hand, and Romanism, on the other, to 
gather from both all that rightly belongs to the content 
of truth common to all, while so distinctly separated 
from them as to disclaim the oppression of the latter, 
which has so seriously hindered the advance of civiliza- 
tion, and the lifelessness of the former, which makes it 
evident that Liberalism and new departures of all kinds 
will do little more to civilize men than they can do to 
save them. 


1388 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


Nor is it necessary to this argument to consider civil- 
ization as the chief end of Christianity. It is not even 
approximately such. The force is too deep and broad to 
empty itself into such an effect. It can appear at the 
surface and be recognized as civilization, but it begins 
lower. It can carry civilization as an incidental, but 
reckons it only such. Its forward sweep is too vast to 
be satisfied with any aim bounded by time. But, on the 
other hand, it reckons upon civilization as its inseparable 
concomitant, and expects to make of it a most helpful 
instrument to the farther and higher purpose with which 
it glows. And this leads directly to the statement that 
there is nothing extraneous, nor accidental, nor transitory 
in the nature of Christianity as a civilizer. It does this 
work in doing its own work, and therefore does it within 
the heart and soul of the race, and does it forever. Be- 
eause this work is an incidental result, Christianity 
becomes the only civilizing force which is perpetual, and 
Inner, and independent. It moves men onward in many 
things as the great winds move the individual ship, just 
because they are already going somewhere on their own 
errands, according to the great laws that gave them being 
and keep them in motion. Christianity civilizes as the 
glaciers cut away precipices and hew out mountains as 
they go onward with resistless pressure, heaped from 
above by the cold and drawn out below by the warmth. 
It civilizes as the upheaval forces which make eoast-lines 
make here and there an island. 

Thus we reach the final and highest future in this 
statement. The religion we profess can civilize just be- 
cause it can do so much more. The assurance is doubly 
sure when the force is seen to be directed toward and 
adequate for greater results than that which we are 
immediately concerned about. An electrical machine 


" , Pe 


= ns a eames eerste sae 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 139 


which can light a city can charge a Leyden jar! And 
thus that master of this whole theme, Dr. Richard Storrs, 
has phrased it: ‘‘ The religion of Jesus has not merely 
rectified particular abuses, removed special evils, exerted 
a benign and salutary influence on local institutions. It 
has formed and introduced into the world a general 
Christian consciousness which is practically ubiquitous 
and commanding in Christendom ; to which institutions, 
tendencies, and persons are more and more distinctly 
amenable ; which judges all by an ideal standard ; to 
which flattering concessions to wealth, or power, or 
genius, or culture are inherently offensive ; which consti- 
tutes a spiritual bond of union between the most widely 
separated states, and which affirms, with sure expecta- 
tion, its own approaching supremacy in the world.” 
‘‘ Certain peculiar and transcendent elements have en- 
tered the governing life of mankind through this religion, 
and its effect thus far has been to elevate, and purify, and 
uplift, and set forward the race in a wholly unique mode 
and measure’”’ (D. O., of Chr’y, p. 850 and 821). 

Nor must it be forgotten, in closing this introduction, 
that there is a certain good—reflex good—to be gained 
for religion itself by the study of the materials which go 
to make up the argument under consideration. Chris- 
tianity renounces, when thus engaged, any small, or 
ignorant, or purely official, or local conceptions of its 
nature and mission, and it has been obliged to contend 
with all these. It emphasizes the universal petitions of 
the Lord’s Prayer, and breathes a large missionary spirit, 
and speaks confidently of the King’s crowning-day. We 
learn in such studies that the policy which retires Chris- 
tianity into a certain spiritual function and sees it only as 
a gospel of ‘‘ repentance and remission of sins,’’ is false 
to that other form of the great commission which makes 


140 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


‘* whatsoever’ Christ has ‘‘ commanded ’”’ the means to 
the broadest and most comprehensive and beneficent 
changes through which the world can pass. In such 
lines of inquiry we are forced to the conclusion that 
the timid policy is unworthy of the ‘* King of kings and 
Lord of lords.’ We hear //zs challenge: ‘‘O ye of 
little faith, wherefore did ye doubt !’’ and come to some- 
thing like vision of the unseen agencies that surround us 


as ‘‘ horses and chariots of fire.’? We grow unwilling to. 


have any forget all there is of commanding evidence of 
divine origin to be found in tracing the beneficent out- 
goings of that power, the ‘‘ hidings’’? of which are no 
doubt at the cross. James Martineau is quoted as say- 
ing: *‘ The thorough interweaving of all the roots of 
Christianity with the history of the world on which it 
has sprung is at once a source of its power and an assur- 
ance of its divineness.”’ 


Nort to tue InrrRopvuction. 


Acknowledgments of the argument may be here in- 
serted—a few out of many—as evidences of its recogni- 
tion and rank. 

(1) A city daily’ of large influence, and secular, of 
course, says: ‘‘ It is the weft of the world’s history for 
the last eighteen hundred years, exultingly traced by 
Bossuet, quietly recognized by Guizot, and sowing with 
gibes the brilliant pages of Gibbon. . Through the diffu- 
sion and vivifying power of this light our civilization 
derives its distinctive character. The great charters of 
our civil liberties, the elevation of women, our schools, 
our life-breathing literatures, our noble achievements in 
medicine and surgery, and in the arts, that ‘ tend to the 
relief of man’s estate ’—these are a few of the things 


a ee 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 141 


which give the modern West its predominance over the 
older civilization of the East, and which may be traced 
to our common Christianity.”’ 

(2) General Grant—as President—wrote to the chil- 
dren of the United States: ‘‘ Hold fast to the Bible as 
the sheet-anchor of your liberties ; write its precepts on 
your hearts and practise them in your lives. To the 
influence of this book we are indebted for the progress 
made in true civilization, and to this we look as our 
guide in the future.” 

(3) Dr. Andrew P. Peabody assigns, in Joseph Cook’s 
Symposium, this ground for belief in the divine origin 
of Christianity : ‘‘ Because in the history of the world it 
is the only cause of all that has been best and noblest in 
humanity since the advent of Christ ; because I can trace 
under its influence a constant and unintermitted progress 
of which there is no other assignable cause.”’ 

(4) Bishop Huntingdon writes (March, 1885): ‘‘ The 
undeniable effects of Christianity on national, domestic, 
and individual progress, wrought through the organiza- 
tion, ministries, and missions of the Christian Church, in 
knowledge, virtue, order, freedom, and mercy, testify 
not only that the God of truth revealed it, but that the 
God of history is with it and within it. Christendom is 
accounted for only by Christianity, and Christianity 
broke too suddenly into the world to be of the world.”’ 

(5) President George F. Magoun follows : ‘‘ Its effects 
upon the world crown all. These are chiefly moral, and 
all its primary and direct effects are. But there are 
secondary ones, unexampled, marvellous, though not of 
the nature of miracle. Nothing else so falls in with and 
fulfils the best possibilities of human nature. Why 
should it not be divine? Christendom is one great rea- 
son why I believe in Christianity.”’ 


142 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


(6) And President Mark Hopkins presents this: 
‘‘ Because Christianity has so greatly modified social life 
and institutions, has founded new civilizations, and has 
in it the only principle and method of permanent prog- 
ress.” 


I. We begin with Christianity and the individual, 
and, first, with the doctrine of manhood. 

Profoundly philosophical is this point of beginning 
which Christianity makes everywhere evident as its own. 
Here is the true ‘‘ unit’’ of civilization and the real pro- 
toplasm of every social structure. It has been urged as a 
distinct reason for the divinity of our religion that, *‘ as 
gravitation is universal by reaching the masses through 
its action on each particle, so Christianity seeks to 
become universal by dealing with men as individuals.” 
Its position here might be regarded as in a certain sense 
a test of Christianity, and how well it bears the compari- 
son with other religions at this point! How strikingly 
it differs from the Platonic dream and the Roman actual- 
ity which destroyed the individual by smothering him in 
the state! And surely manhood in the individual is the 
test for civilization. The civilized man is the best prod- 
uct of any civilization, and therefore the best measure 
for its relative superiority. How quickly we turn from 
the African pigmy to Stanley as index of civilization’s 
power! What a world between them! Whatever 
makes men (the word pronounced with such emphasis 
on so many oceasions) is civilizing. But who does not 
know that Christianity is the mother of men? That for 
which our faith is often reproached from the standpoint 
of Carlyle’s ‘‘ Kénig-mann,” is its veritable glory. It 
does its work with the man essential, and makes much 
more of him than of the man accidental. Its most im- 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 143 


portant contributions to history have been by the many 
and not by the few, in striking contrast with every 
other force, philosophical or religious, which the world 
has ever known. The achievements of Christianity have 
been (according to Brace, in ‘‘ Gesta Christi,’ p. 2) 
through ‘‘ simple men and women not known, perhaps, 
to history, or even to those of their own time, whose 
souls and lives were filled with the principles of this new 
faith. These gradually affected social habits and prac- 
tices, sometimes changing them before they influenced 
. legislation, sometimes, by a favoring accident, being able 
first to reform laws and public officials, thus day by day, 
by imperceptible steps, purifying church, state, and 
people.’’ 

It is writ large in all history that the recognition of 
the mdividual has been the most powerful influence of 
the ages. _Growths toward liberty have been by convul- 
sions cracking the upper crust and allowing motion to 
the masses beneath, and individualization is always the 
result of life-movements. The progress of liberty is the 
history of the rise of the average man. And the same is 
true for equality and fraternity. The point reached in 
the general diffusion and power of the sentiment of the 
honor of humanity is really the characteristic glory of 
the nineteenth Christian century. It is made the test of 
everything. No literature, no statesmanship, no educa- 
tion, no art is now widely acceptable, and none certainly 
is regarded with enthusiasm which has not in it some- 
where the enthusiasm of humanity.. No growth of sci- 
ence or taste is equal in importance to this development, 
and in no other thing is the plastic hand of Christianity 
so plainly visible. 

The foundation for it was laid deep in the Old Testa- 
ment declaration: ‘‘ Behold, God is great and despiseth 


144 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


not any,’’ and in the glory of God’s judicial character as 
‘‘ accepting no man’s person.’’ It is buried deep in the 
great doctrines of the moral nature of man, his immor- 
tality, his being the object of divine love in providence, 
and of divine self-sacrifice in redemption, and of divine 
indwelling by the Holy Spirit, in the awe of the final 
judgment and the serviceableness of man as an instru- 
ment to the glory of God here and hereafter. The 
truths that Christianity makes true of every man com- 
bine to weave a halo about the brow of the meanest man. 
They sweep away all human distinctions of wealth, learn- 
ing, position, education, or color. They make such 
infinite spaces for the human soul that the diversities of 
man’s outward circumstances have no parallax. Chris- 
tianity both creates and sustains the sentiment by the 
measureless dignity with which it crowns human nature 
(concealing nothing, meanwhile, of its needs). It is in 
contrast, here, with the abuse of the word ‘* humanity”’ 
by atheistic infidelity, which has been called a “ book 
with three pages—(1) an animal, (2) a man, (3) death” 
(K6gel). 

How soon this upward lift of the average man began 
to be felt after Christianity dawned! Our Lord made it 
known by every act and word of His life. He taught 
‘what ’twas to be a man,’ and that every one might 
reach it, and chose His place with the lowly and made 
fishermen His apostles and called not many ‘‘ rich and 
noble.”” The middle wall of partition was seen to go 
down as the Gospel area widened. Church history con- 
firms the principles of the faith, and now the doctrine of 
manhood leads and rules the world through the dominant 
Christian nations. At the very beginning it brought 
out the dignity of labor amid a slave population in Rome. 
‘* AJ] the useless servants of Roman society, the parasite, 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 145 


the pimp, the circus-rider, the gladiator, the debauched 
actor, the servant of idols, the obscene comedian and 
prostitute were changed by the new faith into industri- 
ous producers and workers, Work became honored 
under the new religion’’ (Brace, “ Gesta Christi,’’ p. 69). 
Slaves were known to plead at the Roman bar: “I am 
not a slave ; I am a Christian. Christ has freed me.”’ 
Think how the free, earnest, spiritual meetings for devo- 
tion and instruction, where ‘each had a psalm,’* must 
have given the sense of equality! These could not 
co-exist with caste. Brahmanism—the synonym of caste 
—is declared to be ‘ utterly selfish, being constructed 
and maintained in all its features solely for the interests 
of one class—the Brahmins. To elevate and benefit the 
masses it has no lessons and no influences”? (D. Rowe, 
Guntoor, India), Not only the milder, but the severer 
doctrines of Christianity are full of this equalizing force. 
See how it deals with sin and makes it the close-lying 
and universal characteristic of mankind ! Tow impar- 
tially its punishments are distributed ! And nothing in- 
dividualizes more signally than the doctrine of separate 
and individual responsibility after death. Sir Henry 
Maine notes its influence in lessening, through the ancient 
faiths of India, some harsher features of the written law 
of the Hindoos, and its full revelation in Christianity 
brings compassion for the guilty as nothing else ever has 
or ever can. To seek and to save “the lost’? Christ 
came, and the Christian goes, and Christianity invariably 
prompts. 

And it is curious to note how certainly they who seek 
to state the truth of humanity in supposed original terms 
will be sure to employ Christian ideas—e.g., ‘‘ Man’s 
destiny is to progressive civilization and a constitution of 
society which makes progressive civilization the exclusive 


146 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


property of the few and practically debars the vast mass 
of the people from participation in it, stands in the pres- 
ent age self-condemned.’’? This is Lasalle’s idea in the 
celebrated Workingmen’s Programme (of 1863), and yet 
it is the purest Christianity. The spirit of our religion 
is certainly the greatest good to the greatest number. In| 
methods we may be the poles apart from Lasalle, but our 
goal is the same, and we will reach it far sooner; for 
Christianity meets just here the great danger of a god- 
less rule of the many. Nothing is plainer than that the 
masses may trample the individual and pulverize him as 
effectually as the brutal tyrant. “ Whatever may be the 
case with democracy triumphant and settled, democracy 
militant, the democracy of an agitating party, is neces- 
sarily penetrated by an overmastering sense of the claims 
of numbers and by a most dangerous depreciation of the 
rights of individuals and the value of ‘individuality’ 
(John Rae, Cont. Soc., p. 107). Thus the balance is pre- 
served. The one for the many, but also the many for 
the one. : 

It cannot then but be true, as claimed, that if civiliza- 
tion begins with, implies, is built upon and measured by 
the individual, then Christianity is the great civilizer. 
For here is disclosed his dignity, and by doctrine and 
practice the equality is created which makes room for the 
individual when created. And all that Christianity does 
is done for all men and from within and forever. The 
market value of souls knows no fluctuation. Christ’s 
sacrifice is the perpetual standard of a soul’s worth. 
The fraternity it weaves is a seamless coat, and fits every 
man. The individualism of Christianity is its true uni- 
versalism. The Church is catholic before it is holy. 
Lines which human imperfection have drawn over its 
fair surface are perishing as the children’s play-marks in 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 147 


the sands are obliterated by the irresistible tides. The 
more God we have, the more man. The more law, the 
more conscience, the more eternity, the more man. 
That which was the demand of created nature is yet the 
demand of the rising race—the man. That within us to 
which Christianity appeals yields the noblest possible 
product of our nature. Man has been revealed to him- 
self. Once revealed, all things give place to him, and 
civilization to its outmost periphery glows with the 
inspiration kindled at this centre. Tf this doctrine of 
manhood “‘be not correct, Christianity is in error from 
the root upward. If this is correct, the glory of that 
ever-living religion which taught it to the world seems 
as apparent as the splendor of Uriel sitting amid the 
sun’s bright circle’? (Storrs). 

II. Looking more narrowly at the individual, we dis- 
cover that Christianity affects favorably his physical 
culture and comfort. 

In the evolution of civilization nothing” is more strik- 
ing than the physical betterment which Christianity is 
sure to bring to the race upon which it enters. Nor is it 
difficult to account for this when we remember how thor- 
oughly clear our religion is from that Eastern mysticism 
which identified the body with sin, and made their rela- 
tion that of cause and effect, inseparable and essential, so 
that one must despise his body who cared for his soul. 
Nor less clear is it (though sometimes misunderstood) 
from all ideas of asceticism and bodily mortification for 
the sake of mortification. That from within ‘‘ defileth 
the man,’’ and fastings are only to control, not to injure, 
and thereby to benefit the body. And more. It is 
positively filled with such consecrating and conservative 
ideas as insure culture of the body as well as control. 
The body is immortalized by the resurrection. It be- 


148 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


comes the choicest instrument of an obedient spirit in a 
service which is liberty. It takes on the aspect of a 
temple as dwelling-place of the Holy Ghost and a house 
of communion with God. It is cut off from the taint of 
every vice as part of the body of Christ, of whom all its 
parts are °° members.’ All which makes it certain that 
the body will be cultivated and conserved so that it shall 
express while it shares all the activities of a clear and 
clean soul-life. Nowhere is there better foundation for 
or quicker sympathy with the cheer of admiration for 
every bit of honest muscle and the hardihood and endur- 
ance which furnish the physical basis for Christian 
heroism. Itcannot but be that real Christians will grow 
(taken by and large) to be a healthy race. And this is 
visible in a still larger way in that the play of all the 
great forces (selection, and heredity, and persistence) 
insures the continuance and growth of that race that is 
characterized by precisely those virtues which Christian- 
ity is alone competent to nourish and preserve in the 
best way. 

Nor is Christianity in the least indifferent to physical 
comfort. It likes it from the African’s first cotton shirt 
(which also comforts the missionary) up to the latest 
addition—natural gas fuel in a cold Northern winter. 
All unnecessary hardships, all the sufferings incident to 
disease and vice and war, and all the poverties which de- 
prive men of warmth and cheer, it sets itself vigorously, 
and as part of its most sacred commission, to remove 
and to prevent. Every real comfort, made possible to 
every man, helping the great output of life’s activi- 
ties, and abolishing every hindering inconvenience in 
homes and roads and seas, is its ideal. It loves not 
luxury, but that just because it loves diffused comfort, 
as appears in John Wesley’s famous maxim, *¢ My lux- 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 149 


uries for other people’s comforts, my comforts for their 
necessities.’’ It loves not waste, for that makes want. 
And it is all the more sure to accomplish physical 
development, beauty, and comfort, because utterly un- 
willing to make any or all of them its first concern. It 
does care for physical beauty in both sexes, relishing just 
as much that characterized by vigor as that redolent of 
grace ; and it has a supreme contempt for mere pretti- 
ness that does not mean vigor and usefulness on either 
side ; and it has a strong denunciation for every vice, or 
vicious amusement, or foolish fashion which can cut 
away the early strength of man or woman ; but it does 
not seek to create a race of athletes or of professional 
beauties. or both sexes it honors the perfection which 
is the mark of healthful play of every function, and it 
seeks that perfection, with its beauty and power, for the 
sake of noble purposes beyond, ‘This gives the equi- 
poise which a godless civilization has never been able to 
preserve. The idolatry of the body ends in nameless 
vices. The idolatry of comfort ends in sybaritic good- 
for-nothingness. Nothing is so effective in saving from 
the brutality of the slugging-match, or the sensuality of 
the modern stage, as the uplifting purposes which Chris- 
tianity puts behind strength and beauty. Nothing can 
so effectually prevent our becoming slaves to the very 
conveniences of modern life as the Christian idea that 
comfort ceases where indulgence begins; that whatever 
keeps or increases power is itself to be judged by the use 
of which that power is susceptible. So, then, nothing 
can so make comfort and keep it from unmaking men as 
the nobler Christian conceptions. Either strength or 
beauty, when knitted into the texture of an ennobling 
life-purpose, is more easily and certainly reached and 
more surely conserved. Neither can abuse us, and we 


150 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


will not abuse either. Ah! there is no physical regen- 
erator of men and races like the simple, pure upper: wir 
‘nto which Christianity brings us. It has all the sparkle 
of the sea, and the purity of the Adirondacks, and the 
resin of Michigan pineries. Historically, this Christian 
nurture of the body has told in the shocks of every war 
‘1 which the Christian races (sometimes to their shame) 
have met the uncivilized, and has told again as the 
‘‘Giant in the Spiked Helmet,” rich as yet in the 
virtues that make bone and muscle, and skilful in the 
culture which shows how to use them, has brought his 
powerful mace down to the south and west of him. If 
now there shall be Christianity enough in the races which 
Christianity has made physically strong, to keep them 
away from Satanic ambitions for territorial aggrandize- 
ments, and keep them at peace with one another, and 
enable them to prevail against the gnawing vices of their 
still unchristian elements, then we shall see what races 
Christianity can produce. Oh, for more Christianity to 
perfect its own already magnificent products! Such 
men and women would be, as they walked the earth, an 
anthem of perpetual praise and a reminiscence of Eden. 

III. But Christianity would have a sore task even 
to improve the bodies of men if it could not reach 
their minds. Just here we discern its yet greater 
results. The intrinsic power of Christianity to awaken 
mind cannot be too confidently asserted. Men must 
think to be Christians. Religion has no objection to 
being made an object of thought, but, on the contrary, 
by the very strength and determination with which it 
posits itself in the world of thinking does it challenge 
attention. We care not whether men call it a ‘‘ science 
of religion” or a ‘‘ philosophy of religion,” the thing 
is certain that nothing will ever be pursued more in- 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 151 


tensely as matter of thought. In agnosticism there is no 
rest for the wing of the dove. While philosophy can 
hold to any real knowledge, it will hold religion with the 
same grasp. Christianity will be the last of the certain- 
ties to retire defeated from the intellectual arena. Tt 
furnishes man’s best reasons for maintaining a standing 
in the realm of spirit, and will ever awaken mind, if for 
no other reason, in order that it may vindicate its own 
existence. Religion is essentially a thing of intelligence, 
because it depends upon truth, whether abstract or con- 
crete, and provides for no emotions save on the basis of 
intelligence. 

Christianity is greater here than other religions, but 
yet, like them, by the nature of the case. Nothing has 
ever been so attractive to men of thought. The greatest 
names of history—those whose impress is on the real life 
of men—are all connected with religion. Zoroaster, 
Confucius, Buddha, Moses, Thales, Socrates, Plato, Zeno, 
Seneca, Marcus Aurelius, Epictetus. That which men 
most remember about them is their teaching of religion. 
Great systems of world-thought are religious systems, 
more or less. Religion is at home in the realm of mind. 
It is neither exclusively ethical nor exclusively specula- 
tive, but demands the practical reason. The literature 
of Christianity is addressed to mind, and demands an 
awakened mind to comprehend its basal ideas. How 
extended and varied it has become! Think but a mo- 
ment of what themes those are with which Christianity 
appeals toman! Their grandeur, and even their difi- 
culty with the fineness of discrimination they demand, 
cannot be forgotten for a moment. And they are omni- 
present. They lean out of every side of nature and life, 
and when once proposed they are like some strange pict- 
ures—the outlines of their faces peer out from every 


152 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


point of life’s surface. All great subjects are full of 
them, and no man can study nature, history, philosophy, 
or law without meeting religion. How can it fail to 
provoke thought and arouse mind ? 

Take the study of its evidences alone. The large 
claims and the larger arguments take in the whole man. 
The breadth of the territory is astonishing. Miracles 
mean the whole of nature from atom to evolution. 
Prophecy means all history. Providence and grace raise 
the deepest questions of metaphysics, and moral evi- 
dences call for all the ethics of the ages. Such “ great 
wakening’’ lights cannot fall upon men’s eyes without 
exciting men’s minds. ‘‘ Grand and distinctive truths,”’ 
President Porter has called them, ‘‘ which are no sooner 
thought than they fill and expand the mind with some 
worthy conception of its own greatness, or, rather, over- 
whelm and confound it by contrast with its own little- 
ness.” ‘* God, self-existent, all-knowing, all-present, 
creating yet working after a plan from the beginning, as 
science and history both declare. . . . Is there sucha 
being? <A spirit? knowable? a person ? incarnate ? 
. . . Isit enough that I strive to make myself better, or 
must I rest myself upon the help and mercy of one who 
is stronger and purer than myself? Is life worth living ? 
When I die, will that be the end for me ? Truths and 
themes like these are those that wake to perish never in 
a thoughtful soul. With them he cannot but wrestle as 
a strong man for his life, that he may know in whom 
and what he may trust. They are fitted to rouse and 
invigorate the critical thinker to the utmost. Out of 
their intellectual and emotional life they have fed and 
stimulated the greatest of men to their highest and best. 
Every educated man who has not settled with himself 
whetlier they are truths, in the light of disciplined reflec- 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 153 


tion, has not even begun to think.’’ And certainly such 
themes are not lower than the higher spirits among men. 
They fetter no wings of genius, though they may tire 
them. They are supreme inspirations to the loftiest 
faculties. They are world-questions, and demand on the 
historic side of them encyclopedic knowledge. They 
are the deepest questions, and demand the sharpest 
analysis. The supernatural cannot be thought upon 
without elevating the mental stature. Like all things 
that approach the source of being, they show that there 
is nothing like God to think upon. These questions 
lead through ‘‘ celestial gates’? into infinite spaces. 
Even to art this attraction is evident. The great Cor- 
nelius is said to have begun with ‘‘ Faust’’ and the loves 
of the Niebelungenlied. ‘‘ Irom these themes he went 
back to the classical period of Athens; but when his 
artist-soul had reached its maturity, he found subjects 
ample enough only in the mysterious incarnations of the 
Christian faith.” The same thing has been said of the 
progress in Goethe’s ‘‘ Faust,’’ and of some great orato- 
rios, and of Dante. 

And beyond question there are no such princely mo- 
tives for intellectual exertion as are found in Christian- 
ity. It must seek the true in all things because itself the 
truth. So long as the world is ‘‘ our Father’s house,”’ 
and every exact fact is a thought of God, Christianity 
will stimulate the study of nature, and will be making 
hearts and minds ready for largest discoveries and 
noblest interpretations. So long as learning is necessary 
to the full comprehension and exposition of the Bible, so 
Jong will Christianity urge men to study. It has already 
made more readers by its single desire to read and un- 
derstand the Bible than any other educational force the 
world ever knew. The good to be accomplished throngh 


154 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


intellectual furniture must always beckon forward those 
whose Master went about doing good. If the highest 
knowledge be aided by the lower, the pressure toward the 
knowing of God, in which the wise man may boast, will 
increase human wisdom. If resemblance to God is 
partly intellectual, then every Christian motive blends to 
make intellectual culture desirable. And all is crowned 
by an immortality for which and am which we may 
study. Every bud shall blossom there. All beginnings 
here shall be fruitful there. . 

And how naturally we should expect from Chris- 
tianity’s matchless book the most marked intellectual 
awakenings. Remember what the first chapter of John 
supposes the reader to know, and about what it sets him 
thinking. The hints that point to future unfoldings, 
and the address of the book to every mind as having the 
capacity, either now or later, to follow on that line, are 
full of stimulus. The Bible is the text-book not only 
for the pulpit, but for all the great divine teaching 
method. Here is a peculiarly stirring and life-giving 
collection of documents, laws, annals, discourses, hymns, 
biographies, and epistles. Where has it left an un- 
touched spot of human susceptibility ? The comparisons 
made at this point. with the other book-religions are 
brilliantly confirmatory of our claims. And the inter- 
est aecorded the Book of books, even where it is not 
regarded as inspired, proves it again. Think of the liter- 
atures of translation, comment, and controversy to which 
Christianity’s record has given rise. How far they out- 
run in voluminousness, in importance, and interest all 
the religious literatures of all the ages! If there be no 
true intellectual stimulus in the Bible, then may one 
well wonder (with Rogers) at ‘‘ the ensanzty which has 
kept the most diverse nations, but always those in the 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 155 


very van of all science, learning, and civilization, thus 
everlastingly poring over this book.’’ How silent the 
book stands, and yet amid what a chorus of voices which 
it inevitably awakens! Like silver, it brightens whether 
by those who use it or those that pound it, and the world 
seems unable to refrain from doing the one or the other. 
‘‘Immensely as the literature of this country has in- 
creased ” (says the London Z%mes), ‘‘ the Bible now occu- 
pies a larger proportionate space in that literature than 
ever it did. No book raises so many inquiries or touches 
so many interests. The Bible sends the student to libraries 
and archives. To the Bible we owe much of the intense 
and spreading interest in languages and in the originals 
of customs and of peoples. It directs the traveller to 
buried cities, to the tombs of kings, to the records of 
States once great and well-nigh forgotten. Wherever 
the battle of opinion is now the liveliest, wherever the 
race for discovery is most eager, wherever the earth at 
last reveals her buried history, it is to add to our knowl- 
edge of the sacred story and to our understanding of the 
sacred volume.”’ 

But the historic confirmation of the claim of Chris- 
tianity to awaken mind makes it stronger yet. Striking 
is the fact that the roots of our religion were matured in 
isolation, until the fulness of time was reached. And 
during this process there went forward a development of 
intellect elsewhere almost entirely independent of it. 
But when the time was rife a new power was manifested 
at once. A sudden and strong grasp was laid upon the 
flexible Greek language, and the penetrating Greek dia- 
lectic, and upon Greek philosophy in its loftiest ideas. 
The historical proof is unquestionable that ‘‘ revealed 
religion, when set free, as Christianity, to exert its legit- 
imate influence on the world, at once and in the most 


156 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


powerful manner began to assimilate the elements of 
human knowledge, and revealed its harmony with intel- 
lectual activity, and its appetency for human learning ; 
that, moreover, it stimulated in the highest degree the 
human mind to increase and systematize its knowledge, 
and that it has thus revealed itself, historically, to be the 
most powerful incentive to the search for truth and 
unity, and the chief factor in the intellectual training of 
the race’? (Dr. John De Witt). This assimilation is the 
result of innermost structure. Deeply speaking, Chris- 
tianity covered the same field and solved the very prob- 


lems on which Greek philosophy had been busied. The 


revelation to Christian consciousness was complementary 
to the revelation in nature. Christianity and intelli- 
gence, whether about matter or mind, cowld not but 
have affinity most pronounced. 

All that Christianity has since done in the world as an 
organization has been in the same direction. Gladstone 
could not couple the two in that prescription for culture : 
‘“Greek for the mind and Christianity for the soul,” 
unless the ages had made it evident that the Greek cult- 
ure, which scepticism once helped to revive as a weapon 
against Christianity, Christianity now cherishes in her 
seats of learning as part of her own necessary furniture, 
both for explication and defence. | 

This stimulating touch of religion Goethe well under- 
stood in saying that the deepest problem of all is the 
‘‘eonflict between unbelief and faith. All epochs in 
which faith reigned, whatever its form, were brilliant, 
exalting, and fruitful. All epochs, however, in which 
unbelief in any form gained a sad victory, though for a 
moment they might seem to be bright, vanished from 
the vision of posterity, since no man cares to learn what 
is unfruitful of results.” Even the failures, not of 


- ee SS 
ee ee a er ie ee 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 157 


Christianity, but of Christians, prove this awakening 
power. ‘The aversion to heathen learning wrought mis- 
chievous results after the conversion of the Roman 
Empire, when, of the bishops at Ephesus (481) and at 
Chalcedon (451), many could (probably) not write their 
names (Hallam). And sadly has the Church paid for its 
neglect at the period when every Mohammedan mosque 
had a school attached, and the Paynim could ridicule the 
ignorance of the Christian. But long before this the 
quickening effect had been seen in Ulfilas carrying the 
Bible to the Goths in their own language, and thus 
securing to philology (incidentally) the fragments of a 
precious monument. The Old-High German is said to 
have had its revival impulse from the extension of the 
sway of the Roman Church, as the Middle German had 
its own from the crusades. And it is very widely ac- 
knowledged that the Bible in the Reformation saved 
both morality and the German language, doing even 
more for the latter than the Bible of King James did for 
the English tongue. In Milton’s ‘* Paradise Lost” and 
in Klopstock’s ‘* Messiah” there can be no mistaking the 
old Hebrew spirituality. 

And when the actual institutions of education are 
considered, how clear the case becomes! What one of 
civilization’s great seats of learning is not of Christian 
origin? The University of Paris; the German univer- 
sities; the quickening and diffusing work of Luther 
and Melanchthon ; the projected five universities of the 
Huguenots for France ; the realized three universities 
for Scotland, are all to be counted here. And the 
mingled love of men and love of learning became most 
promptly evident when the sons of the rich despised 
learning (as they often do yet) while the sons of the 
poor crowded the paths of knowledge, but fainted 


158 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


by the way for want of food and shelter. Then came 
charity out of the churches and the religious orders, to 
provide free lodging and free tables for those who hun- 
gered for learning. It is thus that ‘‘ endowments’’ were 
born—that purely Christian product without which the 
Church would be to-day so inadequately furnished for 
her great work in the world. Those even who are not 
Christians can do nothing more than walk in the path 
which Christianity blazed out long ago in the forests of 
ignorance and selfishness. These endowments began in 
the University of Paris as early as 1250. Three colleges 
were founded in Oxford before the close of the thir- 
teenth century. St. Peter’s College in Cambridge dates 
from 1251. By the close of the sixteenth century there 
were thirteen at the one seat of learning, and sixteen at 
the other. | 

Thus, to make it the more evident still, and to signal- 
ize God’s blessing upon Christian love of intellect and of 
men, there appeared that most beneficent effect of an 
educating Christianity—the middle classes of civilized 
populations. That ‘‘ third estate,’? which has proven 
the file to break the teeth of despotism—that ‘‘ bour- 
geoisie,’’ which the anarchic socialists curse so vigorously 
as a tougher obstacle than the plutocracy—that grand 
heart of Scotland, and England, and America—that, the 
want of which made our Southern States the prey of 
slavery and by the resulting convulsions taught us anew 
its worth, that is the peculiar product of an intellect- 
awakening Christianity. 

Keeping the development of institutions of learning 
as our clew, how quickly we discern at home the intel- 
lectual life in Christianity ! ULlarvard, with William and 
Mary, were founded for Christ. The ministry (those 
foes to intelligence) came together with their contribu- 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 159 


tions of books to form Yale. Dartmouth followed from 
the same impulses, and more thoroughly representative 
impulses never expressed the life of any community. 
Our fathers were ‘‘ never so weary or so poor that they 
could not keep alive the altar fires in the temples of 
their religion and of learning.’? Washington thought 
that religion could educate when he gave two thirds of 
Virginia’s donation to him to a Presbyterian academy, 
which afterward became Washington College of Virginia. 
Dr. Benjamin Rush thought so in saying, ‘‘ The busi- 
ness of education has acquired a new complexion by the 
independence of our country,” and, he added, ‘‘ The only 
foundation for a useful education in a republic is to be 
Jaid in religion.’? Such was the meaning of the great 
declaration which set apart the north-western territory— 
the Ordinance of 1787: ‘‘ Religion, morality, and 
knowledge, being necessary to good government and the 
happiness of mankind, schools and the means of educa- 
tion shall ever be encouraged.’’ 

And upon such a sentiment the American Education 
Society (1816) and the American College Society (1848) 
builded when drawing out the resources of the East for 
the needs of the great West. So clear is it here, that out 
of four hundred colleges in the United States, two hun- 
dred and sixty are denominational, and many which are 
not formally such owe their vitality to Christian benefi- 
cence and care. The overwhelming majority of Ameri- 
can teachers are Christians, a fact itself indicative of the 
harmony between religion and knowledge, and of the 
further fact that the people can never be convinced that 
Christian principle is less than a desirable quality in an 
educator. : 

So, then, directly and indirectly, Christianity presses 
upon the perfection of the individual, intellectually, and 


160 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


thus fits him for the highest possible civilization. In its 
most essential constituents it ‘‘ tends to open the intellect 
to truth, to cultivate the humility and fair-mindedness 
which especially enable the mind to see what is as it 1s’’ 
(Brace). There is no need of denying or belittling in 
any way the non-Christian forces which have quickened 
intellect, or the achievements that have recorded their 
beneficent power from Roman law to Arabian science. 
The evidence that the Christianity-quickened intellect is 
putting the nations in which it is dominant in the world’s 
front gives us room to welcome any comparisons. What 
teeming waters are these which the Christian rod has 
smitten out of the rock? How the theologians, and 
systematic teachers of truth to the common people, and 
the expositors, and the broad-minded, learned, and 
philosophic historians, who have unfolded the progress 
of Christian principles in the unfolding world, have 
trooped into the record! And they have been accom- 
panied all the time by jurists and statesmen, and these 
by Christian travellers, all under Christian motives. 
How deep the foundations of popular education have 
been laid! ‘‘ Christianity alone, with instinctive im- 
pulse, seeks to quicken and expand the minds of the 
humblest, that they may apprehend what she allirms to 
be the truths of the universe, and may be lifted to con- 
template His incomparable plans on the word of whose 
power the world is hung. It is, at least, a great aspira- 
tion. Wesee its effect in millions of schools with which 
continents are alive, and in which are laid the sure 
foundations of the world’s ultimate civilization. .. . 
The university, as truly as the chapel or cathedral, is the 
offspring of the faith which was preached in Judea” 
(Storrs). 

TV. But now that we regard the individual from 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 161 


the standpoint of taste, can we still affirm that Christian- 
ity civilizes here? If asthetics were to be considered as 
the trifling preferences of a vain fancy, or even as the 
merely ornamental side of the useful, much more as the 
realm of all the idolatries of sense, then surely we would 
gladly answer negatively. But if by taste is meant 
noble sensitiveness to the beautiful and all that which at 
once refines and elevates in art, then we answer affirma- 
tively with emphasis. 

The nature of the case really determines the question. 
‘* Civilization is to be known and estimated,” says a 
political economist, ‘‘ chiefly by the number and char- 
acter of its wants.’ And not a bad definition is that if 
‘* character’’ be carefully noted as well as ‘‘ number.” 
By this test, which is specially appropriate in the region 
of esthetics, since they concern wants that are certainly 
not primal, Christianity stands. It must increase wants 
because it increases manhood, and makes all men desire 
larger and fuller lives. Not one of its great motives 
fails to press in this direction. It has a whole circle of 
wants and needs of its own, and leads to the largest culti- 
vation that they may be supplied. When all esthetic 
things are considered, more as power than as enjoyment, 
then it is plain at once that the true servant of Jesus 
Christ must earnestly covet all that these things ean fur- 
nish as means of service. Nor less plainly does Chris- 
tianity develop taste by discriminating severely and with 
its own matchless influence, against all gratifications or 
cultivations of taste which are either low or vicious. 
Let Christianity decide, and the fittest only will survive. 
And just here again it imparts a power nothing else can 
give, enabling man to hold wants (even right ones) 
ungratified at the prompting of principle or charity, and 
ministering to him under the sacrifice a radiant content 


162 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


which would have been the envy of a stoic. By dis- 
couraging and preventing slavery to desires (however 
elevated) and making duty regnant, our religion secures 
the exact conditions in which the ministry of taste can do 
most good, to lighten and cheer our life. 

The relation of Christianity to the useful arts is plain. 
They help to lessen burdens and increase usefulness, and 
Christianity seizes upon them, cherishes them where 
known, and invariably creates them where unknown. 
And certainly wherever beauty can “ grind in the mills 
of use’? the practical and beneficent spirit of religion 
would encourage it. It has a place of recognized value 
for music, painting, architecture, and eloquence, and 
gives them their highest mission in the worship of that 
God whose infinite glories they faintly reflect. Modern 
Bezaleels are still witnesses for God, as the pious Handel 
was, and as Fra Angelica or Ary Scheffer. The love of 
the beautiful has a distinct place in the renewed nature, 
which begins in a new Eden. Christianity can never 
cease to taste with pleasure every fountain for this sacred 
enjoyment, which God has opened in nature. With an 
open Bible we cannot forget to ‘magnify Ilis works 
which men behold,”’ nor fail to remember the beauties 
and the lessons of the lilies. Enthusiasm for the beauti- 
ful is but reflected enthusiasm for God. So far as art 
lies in love of nature, and sympathy with it, and elevated 
views of it, these are things which religion everywhere 
develops. And more is true. Soul-life, kindled fresh 
and strong by the new powers of Christianity, must find 
its way into the fine arts and make them channels for its 
communication and development. It will be sure to 
check their dominance while it ennobles their mission. 
It will prevent either their disproportion or their corrup- 
tion. With an earnest people art must have a moral 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 163 


mission. How evident this has been in the literary art 
of the English! Moral sentiments abound everywhere. 
Shakespeare and the Bible can never be separated, 
though there be that in the poet which the Scripture 
would change. Taste, when there is religion, has most 
intimate connection with the intellect and the moral 
nature. “* Ten centuries,” it has been well said, “ are the 
argument against art for art’s sake.”? And, moreover, 
so long as Christianity makes such homes as are the 
cherishing centres of all the virtues, so long will the 
beautiful and the graceful be continuously developed by 
them. So long as there is Christian society will there be 
a demand for the beautiful, united with the good. And 
as surely as woman continues nobly to fill the place which 
Christianity makes good for her against all sin’s coarse 
selfishness, so certainly will the beautiful grow in the 
importance and variety of its contacts with our daily 
living. And while ever an argument for God is needed, 
Christianity will not cease to urge that one which is the 
despair of infidelity—the existence of the beautiful in 
such profusion and in such utter independence of man. 
Turning now to the history of the case, we find it jus- 
tifying fully these anticipations. It is traced in many 
authorities, and can be but glanced at here. It is visible 
in many monuments, beginning with the rude outlines in 
the Catacombs, which are so pregnant with the hope and 
joy of the early Christians. Later came that grand move- 
ment called a ‘‘ wonderful new birth of poetry and art, 
a true Renaissance in all southern and central Europe.”’ 
‘‘ Freedom, variety, naturalness, dignity, a new ethical 
tone, a larger and sweeter inspiration, came with the im- 
pulse of the new faith into the arts which heathenism 
had cherished and yet dishonored”? (Storrs, p. 234), 
The truth in religion took hold upon the deepest emo- 


164. DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


tions of the soul, and beauty glowed upon the canvas, 
and devotion rose in the cathedral into an anthem in — 
stone. No classic ideal ever approached the Madonna. 
Raphael has left ‘‘ an ideal of beauty and religious emo- 
tion which has been and is still an element in human 
progress.’? There has been some iconoclasm and mis- 
directed zeal, and a good deal of fear lest art should be 
found ‘‘ poisonous honey ;’’ but the inner sense of Chris- 
tianity has always returned to the true poise of a conse- 
crated art. The singular history of the religious Guild 
of Masons, which built many of the Gothic cathedrals, is 
strong proof of the Christian use of art. They wrought 
with marvellous grandeur of conception and fertility 
of resources, and painstaking detail, and religious feel- 
ing. ‘* Trained in certain scientific methods of build- 
ing, which they held as secrets, they went from one 
country to another as artists, to express their love of 
beauty and their adoration for Christ in temples which 
should be symbols of majesty and harmony for all suc- 
ceeding ages’’ (Brace, ‘‘ Gesta Christi,” p. 496). 

Nor less distinctly does Christianity cultivate the 
nobler tastes as these find expression in softer manners 
and in all the amenities of refined society. How surely 
it teaches men that manners reveal the soul, and that for 
- every influence upon our fellow-men we are responsible ! 
It puts us into generous admiration of all bearing which 
expresses genuine goodness of heart. °° All things to all 
men,’’ said the most uncompromising, as well as the 
most cultivated, of the apostles. Religion grafts polite- 
ness on the stock of ‘‘ brotherly love,’’? and makes a 
nobler fruit of it than artificial rules can produce. 
‘Love as brethren, be courteous.’’ It hates the insin- 
cerity which often brings good manners into discredit, 
but teaches with vigor that nothing unpleasing to any is 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 165 


to be done except principle demand it. Real piety is 
the most refining influence the world ever knew. Many 
have witnessed the native gracefulness of a gracious soul. 

All noble tastes are, therefore, Christian, and the in- 
dividual is thus far perfected by Christianity. 

V. But a far profounder problem than the beautiful 
is the good. How to make men see the beauty of virtue 
and choose against the moral deformity of vice is much 
more difficult than to educate them to desire comfort and 
admire grace. Even Plato could mourn that all the 
magnificence of Pericles had not made the young 
Athenians any better. How to uplift and make that 
elevation permanent is the most perplexing problem of 
civilization, since the moral ever seems to lag behind the 
material, and even at times to be hindered by it. Char- 
acter us the crucial test. Even with physical conditions 
assured, and mind developed, and taste refined, man is not 
fitted to be the unit of civilization until his moral being 
is not only equally developed, but strengthened into 
robust domination. If civilization be attainable by the 
elements already mentioned, by character alone is it 
maintainable. Civilization is not worthy of a moral 
race, without demanding a moral manhood and affording 
a moral mission. 

But nowhere does the power of Christianity to meet 
the requirements of the case appear more signally. If 
character be the chief demand of civilization, it is the 
chief product of Christianity. If the differentiation of 
the individual into moral independence is the condition 
of civilization, it is exactly this that Christianity is com- 
missioned to accomplish. It knows that the ‘‘ hope of 
humanity for permanent purity and happiness is in the 
purification of the affections, the subordination of the’ 
will, the regulation of the passions, and the quickening 


166 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


of the conscience.’’? Slenderer than a spider’s web is the 
hope of permanency in civilization unless there be in- 


fused some conservative power growing out of radical’ 


change in individual character, and certain as fate is 
the sequence of civilization upon Christian character. 
Profoundly convinced of this, for reasons that are 
wider and deeper than civilization (as ordinarily appre- 
hended), our religion aims at perfection, and will accept 
no lesser result as a fulfilment of its ideal. Its whole 
teaching against circumstance as the measure of manhood 
ig instinct with the conviction that the first need of the 
world is to be made morally stronger. By crowning 
character as its ideal, requiring it here and rewarding it 
hereafter, Christianity infuses a spirit into institutions 
and laws which is as certainly practical in effect as it is 
heavenly in origin. 

In this great work there are abundant opportunities of 
comparison. From the lowest forms of nature worship 
upward to the severest form of Greek philosophy in the 
cynic, or its most pleasant form in the epicurean, or its 
highest form in the stoic (so lofty as to have been called 
the preparation for Christianity), it is to be seen what 
men in the large each system produces. And the series 
of individual characters may be added, illustrating 
single virtues—and some of them more than that 79% 
Cyrus and Qakyamuni, Regulus and Cato, with Par- 
menides and Socrates. We know the most and the best 
which can be done without Christianity. As against all 
the failures of paganism, Christianity shows most brilliant 
successes with individuals and with masses. What un- 
known forces she brings to the task in a pure Godhead 
thoroughly believed in, itself alone sufficient to prevent 
thorough debasement! Christianity broadens character 
by the universality of all its teachings. The Fatherhood 


— o x ideale 
a ee “ s,s 


é 
. 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION, 167 


and the love of God evoke the finer emotions, Its clear- 
eut and authoritative moral distinctions give both un- 
wavering outline and tense texture to manhood. Sucha 
God and such teachings of God must make men. 

Just here we meet fully a challenge of infidelity— 
** To what should appeal be made in raising men to higher 
civilization ?’ The answer is found in Christianity’s | 
deepest forces. They move from within and by motives 
level with our loftiest possibilities, both intellectual and 
moral. We are just at the point to say that, as civiliza- 
tion is based upon conscience, it must be based upon 
Christianity, because that makes conscience. There is 
neither peace, nor confidence, nor stability without con- 
science ; and without Christianity there is no right 
theory of conscience, nor supreme rule for this regula 
regulata, nor clear authority for this faculty which must 
be regnant if society is to be secure. In character- 
making Christianity is king! As for the individual, 
so for mankind, and even by the individual to man- 
kind. In Christ Jesus the world is a ‘‘ new creature.”’ 
‘* Old things ”’ are in fact passed away, and the strug- 
gling elements show daily evidence that all things are be- 
coming ‘‘new.’? Men must believe in the civilizing 
power of Christianity while ever it continues to exercise 
its regenerating power. ‘The greater certainty includes 
the less. What cannot Christianity do with men when 
itcan make Paul out of Saul, and Norbert of the twelfth 
century out of a dissolute courtier, and Newton out of 
a slave-driver? These two results must not and cannot 
be dissociated. It is in converting men that Christianity 
obtains the nucleus of its civilizing growths. Were 
conversions to cease, civilization would be arrested. It | 
is in this mysterious dying that the ‘‘ much fruit”’ 
begins. It is in a passionate deep and living grasp upon 


168 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


the great converting truths that we gain that power of 
Christianity to regulate and brighten and broaden life. 

How frantically the world is calling for character ! 
Poets cry that he gives best to that ideal he calls his 
‘country’? who ‘‘ gives a character erect and firm,”’ 
which no shock can move from the ancient bases of man- 
hood. Social philosophers are forced to pose as the last 
test of civilization—what sort of men does it make ? 
Statesmen are jealous of the moral stamina which consti- 
tutes the fibre of the material they manipulate. All men 
say the same thing in proportion as they have any true 
conception of society’s structure and foundations. Char- 
acter is the grain of a people, and determines the measure 
of civilization as certainly as the grain of a wood deter- 
mines the polish it can receive. 


‘< Tll fares the land, to hastening ills a prey, 
Where wealth accumulates and men decay.”’ 


But our religion is a specific against such poisons as mar 
the manhood of a people. Itis that or nothing. It 
abominates wealth asa substitute for virile virtues, and 
knows how poor a land is that is only ‘‘ rich and in- 
creased in goods.”’ 

Have we not reached here a point in the argument 
which is absolutely decisive? If Christianity can meet 
this keenest and most imperative demand, this most vital 
need—character in the individual—it can civilize the 
world, for character and civilization are coincidents, if 
not synonyms. ‘The first carries all the essentials of the 
second, and ¢hey will construct the accidentals. And is 
it not all still plainer, when we add that most powerful 
of all the potencies of religion to make men—the char- 
acter of Jesus Christ ? Can men live according to Jesus 
and not be civilizing forces, whether in Africa or a 


, ; * 
ee ee ee 


eT ee ee eee” _ 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION, 169, 


metropolis? Noman can live for Christ, or like Him, 
and not live for the race. What can be so attractive as 
realized perfection! ‘‘ Christianity is embodied and 
manifested to mankind in the living person of Jesus 
Christ, who stands, has stood, for eighteen centuries, and 
promises always to stand in the complete stature of men, 
the one perfect type, measure, and pattern of our mani- 
fold humanity” (Bishop Huntingdon). As in the beau- 
tiful legend of the ‘‘ Great Stone Face,” the boy who 
gazed upon it grew intoa kindred majesty of expression, 
so in Christianity. Holding high against the arching 
sky the massive figure of the perfect Christ, religion draws 
the world into the same image. All ideals are ennobled 
by this suspended outline of perfection. 

And now if we turn to ask for the record that proves 
historically this character-making power of Christianity, 
where shall we noé find it written? The histories are 
full of it where they trace the progress of ci vilization, and 
would be fuller were they more deep-seeing and more can- 
did. Institutions are always less than the men who make 
them, and the biographies of the men who have done most 
for the world are the biographies of those who have been 
best in the world, and they are the products of Christian 
influences. This record is that of the angel ‘ writing in 
a book of gold’ the names of those who ‘loved their 
fellow-men,’’ and whom, therefore, ‘“‘love of God had 
blessed ’’—nay, the record is engraven deep upon that 
‘* Book of Life,’’ whence it shall flash in splendor on the 
last day. It is written in all languages under the sun. 
Where and when did any body of true Christians fail to 
be higher in character than any body of men guided by 
other principles? ‘‘ Christianity,” exclaims President 
Hopkins, ‘‘ has transformed individual character as noth- 
ing else has done or can do.” What village can you 

\ 


170 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


enter in any Christian country and not find men and 
women who are stainless in reputation, and staunch in 
principle, and gentle in charity, and pure in heart and life, 
and beloved by hundreds? What dark ages have ever 
been dark enough to hide the myriad lights which shone 
everywhere from humble, devoted believers and followers 
of the Son of God? How long does it take Christianity, 
planted in mission soil, amid an effete race, to bring out 
upon the repulsive surface the marvellous white water- 
lilies of the Christian graces ? Who looks back upon any 
extended life, and cannot join in ex-President Hill’s 
noble sentence, ‘‘In the intimacies and friendships 
of these fifty years I have found that the purest, 
sweetest, and noblest of my friends were those who kept 
nearest to Jesus’? ? And what student can deny the 
truth of his assertion, ‘‘ My reading of history leads me 
to believe that Jesus has exerted this redeeming power 
from the beginning ; that it was He who has lifted the 
world out of the moral darkness and corruption of the 
Roman Empire ; that His word has had a beneficent 
effect a myriad times greater than the teaching of all the 
moralists and sages of the countries of the East or of 
Greece or Rome” ? Christianity can and must and will 
ultimately, universally civilize just because all the vital 
and essential characteristics of civilization are simply 
other names for Christian graces, and these it cannot but 
produce. Wait a little anywhere, and the vital power of 
an implanted Christian character will be seen gathering 
to itself all that belongs to the amenities and even the 
esthetics of civilization ; and as it gathers it will purify, 
and ennoble, and consecrate them. 

For a closing word, take that heroism or martyr-spirit 
which is conceded by all to be the consummate flower of 
civilization. With this, how much that is rough and 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. La 


uncouth is tipped with flames of beauty ; without it, how 
mean a nation of sybarites and shopkeepers, though every 
home were a palace and every garment a pure dream of 
esthetics. How sickening such a world of muscular 
beauty, with no backbone of heroism and no self-denial 
for great issues! All the influences of material civiliza- 
tion which quarrel with this morale are universally feared 
and deplored. But heroism and the martyr-spirit are the 
familiar products of our faith from Moses, Joshua, Caleb, 
to Peter, and Paul, and James, and on through the noble 
army of martyrs, and down through the reformers, and 
out into the ever-growing ranks of the beneficent sister- 
hoods and of the Christian missionaries. How otherwise 
has it come to pass that the nobility of self-denial is the 
theocratic creed of the whole world? Its good confession 
thrills with homage (even where not intended) to the 
Christianity and the Christ through which and whom it 
has been made possible. The world-wide sympathies are 
reflections from the cross : 


‘Wherever through the ages rise 
The altars of self-sacrifice, 
Where love its arms has opened wide, 
Or man for man has calmly died, 
I see the same white wings outspread 
That hovered o’er the Master’s head.”’ 
— Whittier. 


Heroism may be taken as the type of all the active 
qualities, and self-sacrifice (which so closely blends with 
it) as the type of all the passive virtues, both of which 
Christianity must build into character to secure civiliza- 
tion. Then the result stands certain, for never was such 
a nurse of either class as Christianity. Alone it can, 
and it alone can, produce a steady supply of heroes—un- 
conscious and simple and without the noise of war-dogs 


172 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


or fierce and exciting war-songs. This it can do by the 
sovereign impulse of duty, by the glory of that halo the 
eross of Christ throws about self-sacrifice, by its brillant 
assurances of future reward, and by its worship of unsel- 
fishness in the life and character of Christ. 

Here, then, is the power of Christianity to make 
character, and that of the confessedly highest type, and 
even therein to save civilization from its own undoing by 
its own ease and security. 

All the future is filled with promise by this power. 
There is a full ideal for the race-life. Far from realiza- 
tion, it is nevertheless now firmly imbedded in the con- 
sciousness, the literatures, the laws, the customs, and 
even the arts of the race. Men will never let it die. 
The force is from within as to the mass and for the in- 
dividual, still from within. Every century sees the ideal 
of character more regnant. There is nothing in it to 
unfit men for the struggles of this life, and everything in 
it to fit them for the rest and glory of the next. If, then, 
character is the problem of civilization, and Christianity 
solves the problem of character, it is equal to that of 
civilization. That is axiomatic. Even infidelity cries, 
‘‘ Good people make good laws.”’ 

At this point, therefore, Christianity leaves the indi- 
vidual perfected as the unit of civilization and prepared 
for all that can be demanded of him by its highest possi- 
ble development. Manhood’s honor and place are real- 
ized. The body is developed and controlled. The mind 
is awakened and invigorated. Taste is educated and re- 
fined. Character is secured. 

That which is by agreement the despair of all external 
influences, and of all combinations of human power, is 
arranged for and successfully met by Christianity. There 
ean be no situations in all the added relations into which 


eee ee eee 


CHRISTIANITY AND CIVILIZATION. 173 


this individual may pass, for which he will not be found 
ultimately sufficient. He has a compass which will sail 
any sea. The civilized man of Christianity inevitably 
and infallibly means civilized mankind. 


Norr.—It seemed best in rewriting for the volume to give the 
space to the fuller development of Part I. The synopsis and con- 
clusion are accordingly omitted.—S, F, S, 


LECTURE VL. 


Foreordination in Nature: As an Argument for the 
Being of God, Illustrated from the Maternal Instinct 
of Insects. 


BY REV. HENRY OC. MCCOOK, D.D. 


Tux most ancient of poets * beautifully describes the 
day-spring of creation as greeted by songs of angels. 
‘¢When I laid the foundations of the earth, . .. the 
morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God 
shouted for joy.’ 

It may be, indeed, that these celestial intelligences 
had little prescience of the future, that the issues of the 
creative act which ushered the solar. system into the uni- 
verse lay dimly within their minds. None the less did 
they utter praise, for well they knew that in the eternal 
forethought of the All-Father there were plans infinitely 
wealthy in beauty, taste, order, utility, beneficence. A 
wise founding implies fore-ordering ; and when at the 
fiat of the Almighty the earth swung forth into space, 
poised upon emptiness, yet founded by immutable laws 
in absolute stability, the spirits then living knew that 
the decrees of their God, ‘‘ most holy, wise, and power- 
ful,’’ were pregnant with matter for praise. Therefore, 
the sons of God shouted for joy. 

That which angelic intelligences discerned by faith we 
know by sight. They stood in the dawning of creation, 


* Job 38 : 4-7. 


eT 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. 175 


and glanced forward ; we stand at the Sabbath noontide 
of creation’s completed week, and holding in our hands 
the works of nature, trace them back along the lines of 
manifest design—back to that dawning and through the 
eternity behind it, until our thought alights, wondering 
and reverent, at the throne of the divine Ordainer and 
Author of all. This, then, is the fact, or commanding 
series of facts, opened before us by our theme: Fore- 
ordination in Natural Phenomena, or, as it may be 
otherwise expressed, The Concept in Final Cause. 

Every effect is caused. A cause which, with apparent 
design, is directed toward an end is called a final cause. 
The natural intellectual order in which our minds con- 
ceive of final cause is this: The conception of the end to 
be reached comes first. What is the object to be at- 
tained ? what is the end in view? This question first 
rises upon the thought in view of any future result. 

How shall this end be attained? This is the next 
query inorder. This is the conception of the means to 
the end. In these sentences we have outlined our sub- 
ject. In other words, the phenomena of nature give 
proof continually and universally of foreordination ; of a 
conception, or forethought, or fore-ordering, antedating, 
of course, the phenomena themselves, and arguing a 
design or end which is their cause. | 

We are brought face to face with the fact that there 
is in nature something more to be accounted for than 
the phenomena which strike the senses—viz., the order 
and agreement in the phenomena. In other words, 
there is in the mind of mana principle ef concordance 
which requires an explanation of the wonderful adapta- 
tion of things to each other and to their uses, that order 
which is ‘‘ nature’s first law.”’ 

There are two distinct principles here to be observed : 


1%6 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


1. First, the agreement of phenomena supposes a pre- 
cise cause. Or, to put it in another form, the mind 
-yequires a precise cause for that orderly realization of 
means and ends which the phenomena of nature display. 

Let us illustrate; we will suppose that from a thou- 
sand points of a circle surrounding this city a thousand 
carrier-pigeons are released at once. We will suppose, 
moreover, that within a tower upon Seminary Hall is a 
great dovecote, with a thousand openings into nesting- 
boxes. There is also a bird-fancier leaning out of the 
tower window. See, yonder comes a pigeon, flying 
above the tops of the houses ; it circles around the tower, 
flies straightway toward the window, settles within the 
fancier’s hand, and then nestles away cooing into the 
cote. Ah! and here is another pigeon, and another! 
They come in dozens and scores, winging their way from 
all points of the compass, and settle invariably within the 
bird-fancier’s hand, and thence enter the cote. We 
have counted nine hundred and ninety of them—the 
very birds, by the marks upon them, that were awhile 
before released from the thousand different stations 
around the town. Now, we might conceive that one, or 
two, or perhaps a half dozen pigeons of all that number 
should have sought the hall tower, and taken refuge 
there. But this agreement in the behavior of nine hun- 
dred and ninety birds is itself a phenomenon. If one 
pigeon had come to the tower and allowed the man to 
take it in, as Noah did the dove at the door of the ark, 
that were a fact observable by our senses, and for which 
we might at least try to find a satisfactory cause. But 
the agreement of nine hundred and ninety carrier-birds 
in the same conduct is also a fact, although not indeed 
perceived by the senses, which requires us to suppose a 
cause. What is the cause of that agreement? Thus we 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. VR 


are led to the design within the intelligent mind of the 
bird-trainer, who has set in play the means by which this 
concord has been brought about. This agreement corre- 
sponds with what has been called the concord of phe- 
nomena in nature. Just as in the concordant homing of 
the pigeons we were compelled to seek a special cause, 
so every combination or harmony of natural phenomena 
must have a precise cause to explain the same. The 
concordant homing of the pigeons we could account for 
by the human, intelligent design which caused the fowls 
to know and trace their way to the home nest. The 
concord of phenomena in nature—to what shall we 
attribute that ? 

2. But there is yet a second principle here, rising out 
of a question which the mind yet further requires to 
solve. In tracing the cause of the homing pigeons to 
the trainer’s mind we reach a point in which we have 
placed ourselves before the effect. We have gone back 
of those lines of flight through the air, over hills and 
fields, over the smoke-stacks, spires, and home roof- 
trees of Pittsburg—back of those lines converging there, 
a thousand radii, upon the Seminary tower—back of all 
that, to a point where all that was anricrpatep. Not 
anticipated by the pigeons, certainly, but anticipated ! 
And that anticipation has been @ cause. The trainer 
had within his mind the very effect we have described, 
and not only that, but the means by which it was to be 
realized. The homing of the thousand doves lay within 
his mind as an idea, a plan, an aim, an end; and in this 
ideal form it was the cause of the phenomena. There 
is a sense, therefore, in which that effect—the homing of 
the pigeons—pre-existed in its cause, and directed and 
circumscribed its accomplishment. The homing of the 
pigeons as an actwal fact was the effect of the homing of 


178 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


the pigeons as an édeal fact. The end lay in the 
trainer’s mind as a plan, and this it was which caused the 
end to be realized. 

Let us turn this thought over again in our minds that 
we may fully grasp it. We shall see presently when we 
come to our natural illustrations how plain it is, and 
what along stride forward it shall bring us toward the 
Unseen Designer of all the architecture and art of this 
universe. We may leave our pigeons cooing in their 
dovecote and take another illustration. 

A stranger walks one summer’s day over the storied 
hills of Gettysburg, and beneath a spreading oak turns 
up with his foot an object that attracts his interest. He 
picks it from the ground, knocks from it the accumu- 
lated soil and decay, and finds in his hands a leathern 
belt. The legend ‘‘ U. 8.” shows dim upon the black- 
ened buckle. In the mouldering scabbard is a rusty iron 
bayonet. He draws the bayonet forth, and muses as he 
turns it within his fingers, ‘‘ What is the cause of this ? 
It did not spring out of the soil like the tuft of grass 
from which my foot disturbed it. What, then, is the 
cause of this phenomenon, this which I now see, and 
touch, and think about ?’ 

He is startled by a voice at his side. A philosopher 
of an old, very old school, which in these latter days has 
renewed its youth, steps from behind the trunk of the 
tree and offers this suggestion : 

‘‘The bayonet and belt are the result of a fortuitous 
concourse of atoms, or of some primordial properties in 
matter. ”’ 

We may well imagine our stranger, thus startled from | 
his muse, crying out with emphasis, ‘‘ Get thee behind 
thy tree, O Sophist !”’ 


And yet, if a coincidence of unknown causes has been 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. 179 


able to produce, for example, the genital armor—the 
stings and ovipositors—of insects, why might it not have 
produced belt and bayonet for a United States soldier ? 

However, our stranger, if he have a reasonable mind ; 
will probably come to the conclusion that the bayonet is 
an instrument made by an intelligent being—made, in 
fact, by man. On further consideration, it will be with 
equal certainty concluded that the instrument was de- 
signed to thrust, pierce, cut, to kill. If now, his curi- 
osity being stimulated by his discovery, he shall go over 
the field, and at various points pick up other bayonets, 
and here a musket, and there a sword, and here a bullet, 
and there a shell, he will find his.mind exercised in pre- 
cisely the same way toward the same general conclusion. 
These objects were all designed to pierce, to cut, to pen- 
etrate, to kill. He will go further, and conclude that 
they were all once so used by those who possessed them, 
and that, in short, he has been gathering relics from a 
battle-field. 

Take any similar case. Let the farmer turn up in his 
furrow a flint arrow, a stone axe or tomahawk. The 
supposition that the stones of the field, by some unknown 
law or force of nature, coincided into those forms, will 
never have place in his mind. <A thousand years may 
have elapsed since the rude weapons were formed ; the 
generation of red men who wielded them may long since 
have passed from these shores, westward and ever west- 
ward, until they have been lost in the extinct tribes ; the 
shape of the weapon may be such as the farmer’s eye 
never saw, the very rudest germ of a modern tool; all 
the same, he will say, ‘“‘ This is the work of man!” He 
will say this because he sees in the object the proots of 
its pre-existent end. It was designed to cut, to hew. 
That design controlled its shape. The object carries 


180 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


within itself the proof of a foreordination toa certain 
use and aim. 

The stranger, standing upon the field of Gettysburg, 
with the steel bayonet in his hand, can—yes, must think 
himself, by an unimpeachable process of reasoning, to a 
point when his rusty relic existed within the mind of 
some mechanic, inventor, military genius, as a fore- 
thought, as a fore-purpose. That conception of an end, 
and the accompanying purpose and plan to reach the 
end, in other words, that foreordination was the final 
cause of the implement of war picked up that day from 
the green sward of our great Pennsylvania battle-field, 
and of all other relics like it. 

Precisely thus do we find ourselves compelled to rea- 
son upon every natural object which presents itself to us. 
Take from our stranger’s hand the bayonet of Gettys- 
burg, and place therein the sting of an ant, wasp, or 
bee. As he considers the effect which it is evidently 
designed to produce—namely, to pierce, to cut, the ob- 
ject relates itself to the futwre in which that effect is to 
be produced, as well as to the past in which the design 
was formed and realized. The action of piercing which 
results from the structure of the sting, and which in this 
sense is an effect, has been at the same time one of the 
determining causes of the form which has been given to 
the chitine of which it is composed. It is, therefore, to 
quote the language of Janet,* a sort of cause which acts 
in some fashion before existing ; it is an effect which, 
foreseen or. predetermined by the efficient cause, has 
obliged it to take one form rather than another. 

Here, then, we may stand to-day. It is not only the 
agreement of phenomena with each other which we are 


* Final Causes, p. 31, Edinburgh edition. 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. 181 


to account for, but also the agreement of present phe- 
nomena with the future, and their determination by the 
future. For this strange accord between past and future 
the law of causality demands a reason. That reason 
must bring us inevitably within the circle and sweep of a 
foreknowledge which ‘‘seeth the end from the begin- 
ning,’ within the omnipotent activities of a foreordering 
power which—no ! let us, if you please, say Who— W uo 
hath moulded the forms and forces of nature according 
to the eternal counsels of His will. 


ILLUSTRATIONS FROM NATURE. 


Let me first introduce you to our friends of the beetle 
world, the Coleoptera. Since the days of the Pharaohs 
and the sacred scarabez, they have been the most popu- 
lar, perhaps, of all the insects known to entomologists. 
Their numbers, habits, and especially their varied rela- 
tions to man, both beneficial and injurious, have invited 
to them a wide and most careful scrutiny. They include 
some fearfully destructive tribes—regular Goths and 
Vandals, who march in solid phalanx from the Rocky 
Mountains to the sea-board, like the Colorado potato 
beetle (Doryphora decem-lineata), preying upon the 
leaves of the national tuber of Ireland. Their weevil 
legionaries ravage our wheat-fields, and their rose-bugs 
invade the ladies’ flower-beds. On the contrary, they 
give the rubicund color to our Christmas candies, and 
the yet more rubicund hue to our poor bodies when the 
medical gentlemen put on them a blister-beetle plaster. 
However, whether these last are to be ranked with bless- 
ings or banes may be an open question. ‘The number of 
living species of Coleoptera is enormous, closely ap- 
proaching one hundred thousand, of which fully eight 


182 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


thousand are native to the United States. They appear 
to have been proportionately as abundant in the geologic 
eras, as about one thousand fossil species are known. 
They are found as low down as the coal formation, 
though more abundant in the Tertiary deposits, and espe- 
cially the amber of Prussia.* 

One of the longicorn beetles most interesting in its 
habits is the hickory-girdler, or frog-girdler (Oncideres 
cingulatus).+ It may be seen in the groves surrounding 
Pittsburg during the last two weeks in August and the 
first week in September, operating upon the bark of the 
tender branches of young hickories (Carya alba), to’ 
which it confines its attention chiefly, although not ex- 
clusively. The mode of procedure is as follows: The 
mother beetle selects a small branch or twig from a half 
to a quarter of an inch thick, and gnaws im it a little 
cavity in which she deposits her eggs. She then pro- 
ceeds to gnaw a groove about a tenth of an inch wide 
and deep around the branch and below the place where 
the eggs are deposited. What happens? Did you ever 
see on our frontiers or in our woodland clearings a field 
covered with standing timber whose brown trunks and 
leafless, withered branches rose gaunt and bare into the 
sky? If you stopped to glance at the foot of the trunk 
you saw a groove cut all around it, destroying thus the 
circulation of the tree and causing death. This is what 
the woodmen eall ‘‘ girdling’’ trees, and the purpose is 
to kill the timber preparatory to clearing the land, and 
even to allow a crop to be sown upon the interspaces. 
That is precisely the effect which the hickory-girdler 


* Packard’s Guide to the Study of Insects, p. 427. 

+ American Entomologist, vol, 1, No. 4, 1868, p. 76; Transactions 
Amer. Philos. Soc., 1837, p. 52; Packard, Insects of Forest, p. 251 ; 
Packard’s Guide, p. 498. 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. 183 


produces. The grooved branch dies, and gradually 
decays. But what end does this serve? To be sure, it 
is not at all strange that in this world of ours naturalists 
should always be on the look-out for the final cause. 
The eggs of the beetle become little hungry grubs, and 
the food of the grub is decayed wood, and thus the 
youngster finds itself quite in the condition of a healthy 
boy, with a normal boy-appetite, shut up in a well-filled 
pantry. It helps itself on every hand, and gnaws and 
eats, gnaws and creeps, until it is ready to make its saw- 
dust cradle, within which it changes to a chrysalis, and 
comes out in proper time a perfect insect. There is a 
step in the above procedure worthy of especial attention. | 
You have heard of the gentleman of Erin who, having 
occasion to saw off the main branch of a tree, seated 
himself astride of the same, and cut away upon the 
section between himself and the trunk. The result was 
that he not only sawed off the branch, but himself also | 
Does our little hickory-girdler make any such mistake ? 
Not she ; her instinct surely guides her so that the gird- 
ling is made between the egg-nest and the trunk. If it 
were-simply a matter of chance, one would think that 
the chance were at least equal that the mother should ply 
her woodcraft upon a spot between the egg-nest and the 
tip of the twig. But that would destroy the whole pur- 
pose of this economy ; it therefore never happens. In 
fact, it is not a matter of chance, but a matter of fore- 
thought. There is a foreordained plan by which the 
insect operates that may indeed allow for contingencies, 
but admits no such element as a blind chance. 

Tue Oax-prunerR (Stenocorus putator) is another 
beetle * with similar habits, but with some interesting 


* Packard, Insects of Forest, p. 241 ; Guide to Study of Insects, 
p. 496. 


184 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


variations that well illustrate our thought. This insect 
appears in June, deposits her eggs in the axilla of a leaf- 
stalk, or small twig, or in the bark of larger branches. 
The grub hatches and sinks into the centre of the twig. 
When it is about half grown it is ready to practise its 
woodcraft. The purpose evidently is to sever the limb 
from the tree. But there are several things to be con- 
sidered. If the limb break and fall while the grub is 
working at the cut, the bending bark and fractured 
splinters will close down upon the soft body of the worm 
and crush it. Accordingly, our oak-pruner so graduates 
his cutting that the limb remains intact until a sufli- 
ciently strong wind strikes it, whereupon it will break 
off and fall. In the mean while the pruner has crept 
back into his burrow, which he plugs up behind him 
with a wad formed of elastic fibres of wood. He now 
feeds at his leisure upon the pith of the main limb, 
hereby extending his burrow six to twelve inches or 
more, until he attains his full growth, quietly awaiting 
the fall of the limb and his descent therein to the 
ground. 

Let us mark here a few of the most striking proofs of 
forethought. 

1. The carefui' manner in which the burrow is closed 
behind the pruner is a forecast of the danger of dropping 
out during or being knocked out by the fall of the limb, 
as well as the danger from intruding rain-drops or invad- 
ing foes. | 

2. We have already noted the apparent calculation 
shown in the depth of the eut made so as to protect the 
grub from being crushed by the premature fracture of 
the limb. But 

3. There is a yet more astonishing example of fore- 
east. The limb which the pruner cuts off is sometimes 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. 185 


only a foot in length, and is, consequently, quite light ; 
sometimes ten feet long, loaded with leaves, and very 
heavy. Observe now, in the first case—the short light 
limb—the pruner severs all the woody fibres, leaving it 
hanging only by the outer bark. In the second case— 
the long heavy limb—not more than three fourths of the 
wood will be severed. If the branch be of medium 
thickness, a few of the woody fibres are left uncut in 
addition to the bark. 

4. Young trees, at least of the white oak, are some- 
times felled by these larvee. In this case the grub, in- 
stead of cutting the wood off transversely, as in the 
above cases, severs it in a slanting or oblique direction, 
as though it were aware that the winds would prostrate a 
perpendicular shoot more readily by its being cut in that 
manner. Is it not wonderful, you ery, that the worm of 
a little beetle should exhibit such remarkable wisdom and 
foresight ? Wonderful, indeed, if the foresight is sim- 
ply the insect’s ! 

If you were to call an intelligent carpenter to solve a 
problem or series of problems, such as those which are 
solved in the operations of the oak-pruner grub, he 
would certainly exercise thought and forecast. He 
would estimate the size of the limb, the weight of the 
foliage, the length and probable leverage of the branch, 
the force of the wind, the amount of surface presented 
by leaves and wood, the toughness of the fibre. Then 
he would proceed to make his cut, with a very strong 
likelihood of blundering quite as often as the beetle- 
grub. But you perceive that in all this the carpenter 
has had the advantage of long observation and practice, 
of training and reflection, of his own experience and that 
of his fellow-craftsmen. 

On the contrary, here is a little worm whose entire life 


186 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


has been spent within its dark cell, who has had neither 
experience nor knowledge of any kind, of wood and 
winds, of weights and measures, of physical forces and 
mechanical powers, of the effects of cuts, broken fibres, 
bending boughs, of insect and atmospheric enemies out- 
side its burrow—who has solved accurately the carpen- 
ter’s problem, and provided exactly and amply against 
the dangers of the unknown world outside his prison 
walls. * 

This full concord between the behavior of the grub, 
its environment, and the conditions of a nature without 
which it could neither know nor control—what is the 
cause of that ? 

This exhibition of forethought, this foreordination of 
ends, and means, and relations which the dullest intellect 
must perceive—this forecasting of a life which was as 
surely and effectually shut out from the little crawling 
erub as its future destiny is to the cooing babe in its 
mother’s arms—what is the cause of that 

There is no theory in the whole realm and reach of 
human thought and fancy that can so well account for 
such phenomena as the theory which best satistied the 
philosopher, Joseph Henry t—the theory of a supreme, 
personal, spiritual Intelligence--the God of the Christian 
faith. 


* The habits of beetles lie outside my own special observations, 
and I have therefore presented the above facts on the authority of 
Professor Packard and the late Professor Asa Fitch. 

+ See his last letter, addressed to Mr. Joseph Patterson, of Philadel- 
phia. This is published in a tract called “‘ A Philosopher’s Faith.” 
These are his words: ‘ After all our ‘speculations and an attempt to 
grapple with the problem of the universe, the simplest conception 
which explains and connects the phenomena is that of the existence 
of one spiritual Being, infinite in wisdom, in power, and all divine 
perfections.”’ 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. 187 


We cannot stop here in our reasoning upon these 
facts. We have to recognize the connection between the 
entire economy of the oak-pruner grub within the branch, 
and that of the mother beetle outside. The act of de- 
positing the eggs in such position as would permit and 
insure the above results implies the forecast of those 
results. We must ask ourselves why did the mother 
place her eggs in that precise position, rather than in 
any other of the thousands equally accessible to her ? 
On the doctrine of chances there would scarcely be one 
chance in a thousand that the beetle would act as de- 
scribed and as is necessary for the life of her offspring. 
As a matter of fact, she uniformly seeks the proper site 
for her eggs. We account for this most rationally by 
supposing a fixed design. 

Here we meet with a difficulty. How are We to ac- 
count for that design? The mother is fresh from her 
own maturity. Her manner of life before that matu- 
rity you have seen. Shut up within her dark, narrow 
cell, alone absolutely, what knowledge could have come 
to her through what we call ‘‘ experience’? ? Yet she 
infallibly and directly proceeds to place her eggs in the 
very position which brings her and her behavior within 
a beautifully accordant line of phenomena, which look 
forward and lead on to the future life and development 
of her grub. She never sees nor knows her grub. She 
can have had no revelation of its necessities. She las 
acted evidently under an influence or a purpose lying 
without herself, which has operated upon her by means 
of a gift which we have named Instinct. We see the 
forethought, but we look elsewhere for it than in the 
. beetle. 

This again is remarkably illustrated in the economy of 
some of the dragon flies, the Devil’s darning-needles, 


188 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


mosquito hawks, or snake-feeders of popular nomen- 
clature. Some of the large, beautiful species of these 
insects are quite well known to many of you. Their 
large lustrous eyes are said to be furnished with as high 
as twelve thousand lenses each,* enabling them to sweep 
at once the whole horizon and the poles of their insect 
firmament as well. Their coats-of-mail are burnished 
and resplendent with gold, green, and black. Their chief 
glory is their wings, from which the family receives its 
name Nervroprera, or Lace-winged ; and indeed the 
finest lace would ill compare with the marvellous work- 
manship of these organs of flight. They have well been 
called the tyrants of the air and monarchs of the insect 
world. Our rugged Saxon tongue has seized upon this 
predatory trait as fixing for these creatures the name 
dragon-fly. Our French friends, with their usual eye 
to eloquence and grace, have, on the contrary, named 
them demoiselle / 

But whether we call them dragon or demoiselle, most 
of these splendid and ferocious creatures of the air begin 
life as sprawling larvee in the bottom of a pond. How 
came they there? During July and August the various 
species of Libellula and its allies most abound. When 
the mother fly is ready to deposit her eggs, she alights 
upon water plants, and pushing the end of her body be- 
low the surface of the water, attaches a bunch of eggs 
to the submerged stem or leaf. The eggs may vary in 
number, from twelve to one hundred, and are of a yellow 
or bright apple-green color. The eggs are fastened by 
means of an adhesive liquid which the insect secretes, a 
sort of water cement, you might say, and, according to 
the French anatomist, Lacaze-Duthiers, she (Agrion) 


* Jones’ Animal Creation, p. 104. 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. 189 


makes with her ovipositor a little notch in the plant upon 
which the egg-nest is laid. 

The eggs hatch during the middle of the summer, and 
the larva becomes an active, six-legged, wriggling water- 
worm, showing by and by two little wing-pads or rudi- 
mentary wings. These are the suggestion, the forecast of 
the life which awaits it. But until it transforms it 
moves about within its native element, preying upon its 
fellow-creatures.* Note the remarkable foresight which 
the mother’s behavior shows of the necessities of the worm 
which shall hatch from her eggs. That a creature whose 
life is in the air, whose organization is utterly unfitted for 
the water, to whom immersion within a pond would be 
death, should seek the water for the deposit of her eggs 
to whose health and development a water environment 
is necessary, is certainly not to be accounted for without 
the supposition of a glance from somewhither into the 
future. 

We take a further illustration of this point from 
another of those lace-winged insects, the ant-lion, 
Myrmeleon. Ourcommon form is Myrmeleon obsoletus. 
Near the gates of the eutting ants in Texas, and the 
mound-building ants on the great Divide of Colorado 
and various points in the Rocky Mountains, I often 
found small funnel-shaped pits, of various sizes, made in 
the loose soil or sand. In the bottom or apex of each of 
these pits lay a little broad grub, armed with a tremen- 
dous pair of hooked and spiked mandibles. The larva 
may sometimes be found with these mandibles thrust 
upward out of the sand, the rest of the body being con- 
cealed. Now, it so occurs that these Myrmeleon grubs 
are voraciously fond of ants; also that ants are curious 


* Packard’s Guide, p. 599 sq. 


190 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


little Paul Prys, and go peeking around into every new 
phase of nature which presents itself. Of course these 
pits arrest their attention; they pause on the brink, 
thrust out their sensitive antenne to take in the situa- 
tion. Alas! their feet stand upon slippery places. The 
sand beneath them gives way; they slide, with the 
smooth gliding sand-avalanche, down the sides of the 
treacherous pit, and are crushed within the jaws of the 
hungry larva. 

If now we think at all about these phenomena, we 
shall find ourselves asking why should the mother-insect 
in the one case have sought the water to deposit the 
eggs, and in the other have kept to the land % Has there 
not been some foresight of the special wants of the two 
larvee? Has not the difference in conduct resulted 
from a foreordained design, for which apparently the 
insect is not responsible, but by which her whole behavior 
was infallibly controlled 4 

Let me turn now to an order of insects with which I 
am personally more familiar—the Hymenoptera. -One 
winter day, late in the season, a boy rang my door-bell 
and left with the domestic a large splinter of pine board, 
and the message that a gentleman having found it while 
doing some carpentry in the cornice of a church build- 
ing on an adjacent corner, had bidden him run with it 
to myself. The stick showed the longitudinal section of 
a smooth, tubular gallery, bored through the wood, and 
divided into five or six compartments by disks of pressed 
sawdust. The gallery was about one half an inch in 
diameter, the cells about three fourths of an inch long, 
the partitions about one sixteenth of an inch thick. 
Within each compartment or cell was a young bee— 
clean, bright, and buzzing. These younglings were the 
brood of a mother carpenter bee (Xylocopa Virginica), 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. 191 


and were nearly ready to start out in life upon their own 
account, only waiting, indeed, for the inviting voice of 
spring. 

This bee is one of the most common of our Pennsyl- 
vania insect-fauna. Indeed, it is widely distributed over 
the United States. You must often have seen it, busy 
upon the fences, outbuildings, and porches of our subur- 
ban mansions, creeping in at the round gate of its tun- 
nelled nest and peeping out with its ebony head, quiver- 
ing antenne, and black eyes, as though on guard against 
some intruder. Or you have seen the yellow aromatic 
pellets of wood dropping from the burrow-gate, and 
have wondered at the rapidity with which the sawdust 
heap beneath was growing. Certainly it is a very nice 
piece of work, this which our carpenter Virginica has 
done. The entrance is made against the grain of the 
wood, and is about the length of the bee ; then it turns at 
a sharp angle, and follows the grain, thus greatly con- 
sulting the bee’s convenience for the bulk of her work. 
The tunnels vary in length from one to one and a half 
feet. But we are especially interested in discovering the 
design of this tunnel. It has, in fact, already been in- 
dicated. The symmetrical gallery, we have seen, is di- 
vided into several cells. Within each cell is deposited one 
or more eggs. Then is added a ball of pollen, gathered 
from flowers and brought home stored within the little 
‘* baskets’? with which Nature has provided the bee’s 
legs. And what may be the purpose of this? you ask. 
The egg will become a ravenous grub, which must eat 
in order to grow and develop into a carpenter ready to 
take a hand in the rush of building operations which 
marks every incoming spring. This pollen is the bee- 
bread, which the careful mother stows away for her 
offspring. 


/ 


192 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


This done, the cell is sealed. A flattened band of 
wood conglomerate is formed from the sawdust and a 
viscid fluid which the bee secretes. This is rolled up 
in a coil four layers deep, until it becomes a pad or par- 
tition, quite fitting into the tunnel. On one side this 
partition is concave, being beaten down and smoothed off 
by the bee ; the other side, forming the top of the cell, 
is flat and rough. Now the cell is closed, the wee white 
eges shut snugly in, and the mother proceeds to form 
another similar compartment, and thus on until her 
maternal instinct is satisfied. Then she goes on her 
way until the frosts of autumn call her to the torpid 
sleep of winter, or the endless sleep of death. Her 
concern about her baby-bees has ended with the acts 
which have been described. But, as you look upon the 
fresh, healthy, lively brood of younglings that our un- 
known friend has sent us from that city edifice, you 
perceive that mother-love had quite served its end, and 
that the beelings had been amply cared for. Now, let 
us stand with our handful of young carpenters and rea- 
son backward. From beeling to grub, from grub to 
egg, from egg to pollen mass, from pollen to cell, to 
partition, to tunnel, to mother-worker boring indus- 
triously into the pine wood. The entire series of 
phenomena is so connected that the idea of concord ap- 
pears at once. But we have gone thus backward that 
we might, if possible, think ourselves into the attitude of 
the mother-bee, as she hums through the city streets, 
alights wpon yonder cornice, and begins her work. We 
see at once that the above series of phenomena, in its 
entirety and in every stage, has been anticipated. We 
have thought ourselves to a point from which we are 
compelled to declare that the phenomena before us—Viz. , 
the carpenter bee boring within the wood—forecasts the 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. 193 


future. The fact of a foreordination by which the end 
was marked out long before its consummation, appears 
In every action. The size of the cellimplied the forecast 
of growth on the part of the minute egg, and the limit 
of that growth. The gathering and storing of the pollen- 
mass implied the forecast of the grub’s need of food, 
and the probable amount required. The division of the 
tunnel into cells implied the néed of separating the 
developed insects and dividing to each its proportion of 
food in order to secure the safety and health of all. The 
size marked off for every individual cell implied an 
exact forecast of the limitations of space that the tiny 
egg deposited therein would require for development 
into an adult bee. Thus we establish the fact of design 
by so relating our phenomena with the fuéwre as to com- 
pel the idea of a foreordination. 

Our next illustration shall be taken from the habits of 
another member of the interesting order of Tymenoptera 
to which the bees belong—the wasp. One day, while pass- 
ing the West Philadelphia home of a secretary of one of 
our church boards, I was greeted by that genial function- 
ary, and invited to solve an entomological puzzle. Some 
sort of an insect had been boring into the grassy terrace in 
front of his home, and he was sure he had seen it bury- 
ing a locust! What could the creature be about ? and 
what business had bugs to turn undertaker ? and what 
right had they to use his terrace for a graveyard, anyhow ? 

‘Well, to be sure! Get mea garden-knife, doctor, 
and you shall solve the mystery for yourself.”’ 

A few strokes into the soft earth opened up a tunnel 
about eight inches deep, at the end of which we found a 
large beautiful female digger-wasp (Stizus speciosus), 
who was dragged forth and bottled as a warning to 
future depredators. 


194 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


‘¢ But what was she doing there?’ exclaimed a lady 
from a circle of youth and adults who had been tempted 
from the shades of surrounding verandas by the odd 
spectacle of two doctors of divinity digging holes in a 
front yard ! 

‘This is what the little worker was doing,”’ I an- 
swered, as I thrust the knife in a short way further and 
dragged out a lifeless cicada. Now, a cicada is not a 
locust, although people will persist in so calling it ; and 
1 suppose I must sacrifice correctness to clearness and 
adopt the false nomenclature for the moment. This locust 
was one of the annual sort (Cicada pruinosa), a close 
cousin to the seventeen-year locusts (C. septendecim) that 
were ‘so lively in the suburban woods of Pittsburg two 
summers ago. The reason why this particular insect of 
which we are thinking came to have so unexpected. a 
sepulchre in the secretary’s front-yard is this: the grubs 
of digger-wasps are insectivorous, and the especial insect 
which they affect is the cicada. Nature never creates a 
normal appetite without furnishing an answering supply 
and a way to find it. Therefore, the mother wasp first 
digs her burrow, and then goes hawking through the 
neighborhood for prey. Alas for the luckless locust that 
meets the maternal eye! It is stung, paralyzed, borne 
to the burrow, dragged within, tucked snugly away with 
a wee white egg laid alongside. By and by the egg 
becomes a worm, or larva, with an enormous appetite 
for preserved meat, and there the preserved meat is just 
beside it, in the shape of cicada-tlesh ! 

There isa cousin german of this large and beautiful 
wasp, which is perhaps better known to most of you; it 
is the blue mud-dauber (Zrypoxylon pollitum). You 
will find hanging this mid-winter day against the sides 
and within the angles of stables and out-houses small 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. 195 


masses of dried mud, which upon careful examination will 
prove to be the clay cells of wasp-pupe, which are now 
snugly tucked inside, encased in stiff brown sacks. Next 
summer these chrysalids will emerge as perfect insects. 
Presently then you shall see them skimming the air, 
alighting on the moist edge of pools and streams, scrap- 
ing together in their jaws pellets of clay. Away they fly 
with these to some convenient site, and with a masonry 
whose swift and accurate skill challenges admiration they 
frame a clay sarcophagus quite smooth inside, with a 
circular opening at one end. Now they are once more 
a-wing ; you need not follow them to the mortar-beds be- 
side the pools and puddles. They are hawking over 
fields and shrubs, hovering around and diving into the 
cobwebbed corners of old barns. What are they doing ? 
Of all things imaginable—collecting spiders! Not for 
the naturalist’s cabinet, however. The spiders are thrust 
into the clay sarcophagus—or, to speak in less classical 
phrase, into the mud-daub; and when the cavity is full 
the opening is neatly sealed up, not, however, before a 
white egg is dropped within. Soon that egg becomes a 
white worm, with that limitless hunger and capacity for 
delicacies which mark small offspring of the human 
species. Now, it happens that the young mud-dauber 
has also a special appetite, and its particular larval-food 
is also preserved meat—preserved spider-meat, in short. 
And there all around are the supplies which the little 
mother has stored—veritable ‘‘ canned goods”?! The 
spiders are not dead, but are simply so far paralyzed by 
the wasp’s sting that while all activity is supended, life is 
retained, and the tissues preserved fresh until the ege 
has hatched, and the larva reached the stage whereat ap- 
petite awakens. 

Look if you please at the phenomena here presented : 


196 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


a minute bit of white matter called an egg is shut up 
within a dark cell, where it grows, lives, transforms and 
reaches maturity without the slightest contact with the 
outer world or with any living creature, except the un- 
conscious araneads upon which it feeds. It breaks out of 
its clay nursery to begin the strange round of maternal 
duties which we have described, every step of which 
implies a foresight of life for its offspring, such as 
itself had passed through. Whence came this fore- 
sight? The instinct is absolutely perfect within the 
young insect when it issues from its cell. It enters and 
presses forward upon a path every stage of which gives 
proof of a wise and exact foreordination of future exi- 
gencies and means best suited to meet them. Let us trace 
these steps backward—back from the sealed sarcophagus 
to the dropped egg, to the stored spiders, to the sting- 
paralyzed spiders, to the eager huntress hawking from 
point to point in quest of prey, to the cylindrical cell, to 
the brookside mortar beds—thus we have thought our- 
selves, and we stand here watching the dauber wasp 
mould her pellet of clay. But so standing, we see by a 
glance along our chain of phenomena that this act of 
the little mason is related to the future. The gathered 
mud implies knowledge of the hardening effects of mor- 
tar; the size of the cell implies knowledge of growth in 
the eggs and exact measure of the space needed for the 
future pups ; the collecting of spiders implies knowledge 
of the food which the larva will need—a knowledge which 
+s all the more remarkable from the fact that the mother 
insect is not insectivorous, but feeds wholly (so far as 
known) upon the nectar of ‘flowers ; it implies intimate 
knowledge of the haunts and habits of spiders ; that the 
flesh, in order to be fitting food for wasp-larva, must be 
‘kept fresh for a number of days ; that the poison within 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. 19% 


the wasp sting will work that strange effect, one of the 
most suprising facts in the whole realm of physiological 
science ; and that thus treated the natural enemies of the 
insect world shall become harmless food for her young. 
All these things we see have been anticipated by that 
force, whatever it may be, that works within yonder 
quivering wasp as she gathers her little hod of mortar 
and flies away. 

Well, what will you say? We venture the belief that 
there is no naturalist living who will risk his reputation 
upon the assertion that these acts were anticipated by the 
wasp herself ; that the mind which foreordained the end 
and the apt and complicated means by which it was ac- 
complished was the mind of the mother wasp fresh 
from its own clay cell. And yet, having thus related the 
phenomena in the maternal instincts of the mud-dauber 
wasp, digger-wasp, and carpenter bee, with the future, 
we are compelled, by the laws of human thinking, to 
place the foresight and foreordination somewhere—some- 
where in mind, of which alone such qualities can be 
predicated. Where is that mind? Who is that Mind ? 
Wuo? Names matter little; whatever, whoever He 
be, He is what Christians reverently call and adore as— 
Gop. 

The argument from order and adaptation is often 
spoken of as the ‘‘ argument from design.’’ The phrase 
is, perhaps, not a happy one. As Professor Flint, of 
Edinburgh, has expressed it, the argument is not from 
design, but zo it. Doubtless the popular use of the 
phrase carries the sense that, having arrived by experi- 
ence and argument at the conclusion that finality is a law 
of nature—that is, that design appears infallibly in 
natural phenomena, the deduction from that ever-present 
and all-pervading law is, that there is a supreme Intelli- 


198 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


gence within which the designs must have originated and 
from which they must have operated. It is, therefore, 
rather a deduction ‘‘ from design’? than an ‘* argument 
from design.” 

Strictly speaking, there is no design in these phenom- 
ena themselves as they have been placed before you. 
Arrangement, order, law there are within them, and 
these things are not designs, but they imply designs.* 
We cannot affirm that final causes in the sense of designs 
are in things ; they can only exist in Mryp. You can- 
not speak of the ant-lion, dragon-fly, the oak-pruner, the 
oak-gnawer, the mud-dauber wasp, the digger-wasp, the 
carpenter bee, as having designs in the several acts which 
have been described. You can only mean that these in- 
stincts, which bear the semblance of, and might be 
described as designs, have been given them with their 
constitutions, and are only a part of the instrumentality 
which fits them for their place in the world. It has not 
been the purpose to show directly the presence of Divine 
design in these facts drawn from the study of nature, 
because there is no such design in these facts themselves. 
The facts would never have been what they are without 
the design. But the design is elsewhere. Outside of 
the insect and its offspring—while insect and offspring 
alike were in the future—pre-existing, fore-ordaining, 
operating efliciently to produce insect and offspring— 
oustide of all these there has been and there is an All- 
comprehending design ; a design that had stood in the 
gates of the past and looked and operated along many 
lines of life, structure, function, instinct, which con- 
verged infallibly upon some determinate point within 
the future; a design lodged in mind, where alone 


* Flint, Theism, p. 154, 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. 199 


design can be ; in mind, whose powers have been sufficient 
to grasp all the wealth of infinite details, and shape their 
issues into the fore-ordained end. 
Who is this Mind? Let us call It—Gop ! 
** Deep in unfathomable mines 
Of never-failing skill, 


Hz treasures up His bright designs, 
And works His wondrous will.” 


We are treading here upon holy ground. We have 
only been turning over a few pages culled from the 
‘* jots’” and “‘ tittles” of the handwriting of creation— 
the small, and humble, and despised creatures of nature. 
Yet we have thought ourselves, in the reading, very 
near to the vail; not simply that which divides nature 
and man from the unseen past, but that which shuts man 
out from the yet more mysterious future. 

The present of a thousand years ago pointed forward 
to its future by the designs which it embalms. The 
bright new bayonet of the workshop tells no other story 
than the rusty steel of Gettysburg’s field. The insect 
of to-day speaks the same language as that of ten thou- 
sand ages past. The fossil insect of the chalk or the 
amber were prophetic in like manner in their day of One 
Intelligence who wrought with eye upon the future. 
The present of to-day is pregnant with the promise of 
the future. The present’ of yesterday—the present of a 
millennium ago—the present of creation’s dawn, they all 
in their cycle have been prophetic of the future. Wher- 
ever, by whatever uncovered records of rock or sea, we 
penetrate the past we lay our thought upon the eternal 
forecast. The future has been in the past. The past 
is uncovered when the future becomes the present. The 
architect of all is the eternal designing Mind. ‘‘ Be- 
fore the mountains were brought forth, or ever Thou 


2900 DEFENCE AND CONFIRMATION OF THE FAITH. 


hadst formed the earth and the world, even from ever- 
lasting to everlasting Thou art God!’ Our childhood 
was taught this simple rhyme : 


‘¢ Twinkle, twinkle, little star! 
How I wonder what you are, 
Up above the world so high, 
Like a diamond in the sky ?”’ 


There is a striking comment upon the fact on which 
the nursery rhymes have been strung, made by Bailey in 
his ‘‘ Festus :”’ 


‘Tt is the eye that twinkles, not the star /” 


Verily! Whether our thought be sent. into the 
illimitable vista of futurity, or whether we gaze down 
the dim reaches of the past, be we sure that the ‘* twink- 
ling’? which overhangs that thought that has been 
rising before us to-day, does not pertain to the eternal 
Thinker Himself, but to the imperfect intellect which 
gazes toward Him. He is ‘‘ the same yesterday, to-day 
and forever.”? And He will reveal Himself to every 
soul who may search after Him in truth, righteousness, 
and faith. 

There is nothing in nature, there can be nothing in 
Nature, that shall dim, much less obliterate, that thought, 
if but once the fact may be turned within the true light. 

President Grévy, of the French Republic, was asked to 
write a sentence in a lady’salbum. He penned these 
words : ‘‘ Life is like a game of chess: each one holds 
his rank according to his quality ; but when the game is 
over, kings, queens, knights and all the rest are thrown 
into one common box.” Yes, and it has been even thus 
upon every field of nature-life. Alons have come and 
gone ; dynasties of small and of mighty life-forms have 


FOREORDINATION IN NATURE. 201 


risen, reigned, and fallen. Their fossilled remains lie 
coffined together within the rock-built sepulchres among 
which geologist and paleontologist delve. Their living 
representatives strew the sea and earth with their forms, 
or fill them with their presence. They lie all in the 
‘* common box,’’ in one ‘‘ burial blent.”’ 

Over them rise monuments on which a hand that is 
not of themselves nor of us has graven one testimony, 
one name. It is the name of the Ever-living ; it is the 
testimony of His eternal sovereignty. 

Sir Christopher Wren, the eminent architect, has been 
given a tomb within the crypt of the Cathedral of St. 
Paul, which his genius reared. On that tomb is the 
Latin inscription: ‘Si monumentum requiris, cireum- 
spice !’’—If you ask for his monument, look about you ! 

Reverently let us write this inscription upon these 
things of creation—write it with a heart that is fixed 
upon the living God. Or, if to any soul the handwrit- 
ing has grown dim, let the grateful task be ours to walk 
—as did Old Mortality among the moss-grown and time- 
defaced monuments of the Scotch covenanters—and with 
loving hand open up to human faith once more the 
legend—‘‘ The hand that made us is Divine !”’ 


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THE BIBLE AND THE NEWSPAPER; or, How to Garner Bible Truths 
trom Current News.—4to, maniila, Price, paper, 15 cents. 


FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, 10 and 12 Dey St., New York, 


HOMILETICS. 
By James M. Hoppin, D.D., of Yale College, 8vo, cloth, $3.00. 


Dr. Hoppin was a pupil of the celebrated Neander, and studied theology at 
Andover and Berlin. ‘his exhaustive work on Homiletics fills eight hundred 
8vo pages; two hundred and forty of which are devoted to the History of 
Preaching, giving sketches of the most celebrated preachers of the past, point- 
ing out the elements of their power and success. It isa most masterly work, 
intended for clergymen of every experience and of every denomination. While 
it will prove inyaluable to the young man just entering the ministry, it will be 
found almost equally serviceable to the aged clergyman. 


OPINIONS OF THE PRESS. 


INDEPENDENT, New York. ‘The author’s style is copious without being 
verbose. It is graceful, pure and finished, yet free enough to permit him to 
interject his opinions now and then with refreshing abruptness.) * * * * 
Every kind of sermon is described and analyzed. ‘The principles of composi- 
tion and rhetoric, as applied to+the sermons, are laid down and illustrated. 
Even the all-important topic of invention is discussed, and every possible 
source from which aid can be sought to develop and assist the preacher’s in- 
ventive ingenuity, is opened to him, As to pulpit style, no one has written 
more wisely or with more caustic wit.” 

INTERIOR, Chicago. ‘‘ The work is certainly full of the important and prac- 
tical results of ripe study, practical observation, and of a large experience, and 
is one which no preacher, young or old, can afford to be withont if he is con- 
scientiously impressed with the responsibility of his position, and able to take 
profit from the suggestive and wise counsels of so careful a teacher as Prof. 
Hoppin.” 

CHRISTIAN UNION, New York. ‘The discussion is conscientiously thorough. 
The whole field of literature on this great theme, ancient and recent, has been 
‘searched for materials, suggestions, and historic instances, Yet the author has 
“not failed to verify and vitalize with his own thinking whatsoever he has thus 
gathered. The enriching effect of experience through his many years as a 
teacher of the sacred teachers, and of a watchful criticism of such pulpit work 
as has been done in our time, appears on these fair pages. A valuable 
element ts his study of the present drifts of popular religious thought and feeling, 
and his practical deductions as to the peculiarities of the work now devolving 
on Christ’s ministers. The volumes will be found also abundant in suggestions 
on points of detail in all departments of pulpit work, helpful with both guidance 
and quickening.” 

CHURCHMAN, New York. “Inthe first part we havea long and exceedingly 
valuable history of preaching from the Apostolic times to our own day. Prof. 
Hoppin has shown much industry in the collection and much skill in the ar- 
rangement of facts, and has made an exceedingly valuable history of preaching. 
He has written in a calm, judicial way as a historian, and not as a denomina- 
tional divine. The selection from the great preachers has been done wisely. 
* %* * Every page betrays the learning and reading of the author and 
proves that he has digested what he has read.” 


_NEW YORK TRIBUNE. * Professor Hoppin’s book, the result of extensive 
study and long experience as an instructor in one of the leading theological 
schools of the country, is based upon a broad and true ideal of the dignity and 
responsibility of the ministerial office. Dante in ‘ The Inferno’ was easily de- 
tected by the wise old Centaur as a living man, because he moved what he 
touched. ‘Thus are not wont to do the feet of the dead.” The preacher is not 
to pass before his hearers as a shade, even though it be the shade of a poet or 
rhetorician. * * * Professor Hoppin’sstyle is lucid, forcible and graceful. 
His book, besides containing a large amount of valuable and well arranged 
matter, is emimently readable, and is worthy of the careful perusal of every 
professional student.” 


FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, 1o & 12 Dey St., New York. 


COMMENTARIES ON THE NEW TESTAMENT. 


MEYERS COMMENTARIES. An American Edition of Hrtnrico A. W. 
MEYER’S critical and exegetical commentaries, with preface, notes and 
introduction, by eminent American scholars. Nine volumes. (1.) St. 
Matthew, edited by George R. Crooks, D.D. (2.)St. Mark andSt. Luke, 
edited by M. B. Riddle, D D. (3.) 8t. John’s Gospel, edited by A. OC: 
Kendrick,D.D. (4.) Acts ofthe Apostles, edited by William Ormiston, 
D.D., LL.D. (5.) Romans, edited by Timothy Dwight, D.D., LL.D. (6.) 
1.-II. Corinthians, edited by Talbot W. Chambers, D.D. (7.) Galatians, 
Ephesians, edited by Henry E. Jacobs, D.D. (8.) Philippians, Colossians, 
I.-II. Thessalonians, Philemon, edited by Timothy Dwight, D.D., 
LL.D. (9.) Timothy, Titus, Hebrews, edited by Timothy Dwight, 
D.D., LL.D. Uniform, 8vo, cloth, each $3.00. 


Rev. C. H. Spurgeon: “ This is a very learned Commentary.” 

T. W. Chambers, D.D.: ‘* Meyer is prince of exegetes,” 

Thomas Armitage, D.D.: ‘ Ofimmense value.”’ 

Tne Methodist Quarterly Review: ‘ A commentary of sterling value.” 


GODET’S COMMENTARIES. Aseriesof Commentaries by F. GopEt, D.D., 
Neufchatel. (1.) Gospel of St. Luke, edited by John Hall, D.D. Paper, 
$2.00; cloth, $2.50. (2.) Gospel of St. John, edited by Timothy Dwight, 
D.D., LL.D. In two volumes, 8vo, cloth, each $3.00. (3.) Epistles to 
the Romans, edited by Talbot W. Chambers, D.D. 8vo, cloth, $3.00. 

Howard Crosby, D.D., LL.D.: “I consider Godet a man of soundest 
learning and purest orthodoxy.’’ 

William M. Taylor, D.D.: “Godet is admirable for clearness and 
suggestiveness.” 

Lyman Abbott, D.D.: ‘ Godet’s Commentary combines the critical and 
the spiritual, perhaps more effectually than any other.’ 


BUTLER’S BIBLE WORK. Commentary on the New Testament by 
J. GLENTWORTH BUTLER, D.D. Being the Choicest and Best Observa- 
tions of over 400 Eminent Christian Thinkers and Writers of the Past 
and Present. 2 vols. Royal 8vo, cloth, each, $5.00; sheep, $6.00; half 
morocco, $7.50; full morocco, gilt, $10.00, 


Howard Crosby, D.D.: ‘The oldest and la‘est writers are equally brought 
into requisition and always with the discriminating taste of a scholar.” 


VAN DOREN’S COMMENTARY on Luke. Edited by Prof. Jamzs 
KERNAHAN, London. Paper, 2 vols., $3.00; 1 yol., cloth, $3.75. 


DEMAREST’S COMMENTARY on the Catholic Epistles, By Joun T. DEMa- 
REsT,D.D. A thorough work. 8vo, 650 pp., $2.00. 


FUNK & WAGNALLS, Publishers, 10 and 12 Dey St., New York. 


PUBLICATIONS OF FUNK &€ WAGNALLS, NEW YORK. 


PuLPit AND GRAVE, 
A collection of many of the mostimpressive and appropriate Funeral Sermons; 
many themes and texts that have been used on funeral occasions, with 
hundreds of Suggestive Hints. An exhaustive work on this subject. Invalu- 
abletoclergymen. 12mo, 360pp., cloth, $1.50. 


Pouurir TaLxs, 
On Topics of the Time, including ‘‘Religion and Science,” “Religion and 
Social Organization,” “Religion and Popular Literature,’ ‘‘ Religion and 
Popular Amusements.”’ By J. H. Rytancs, D.D., Rector of St. Mark’s Church, 
N. Y. 12mo, 46 pp., paper, 25 cents. 


PRAYER AND ITS REMARKABLE ANSWERS. 
By WiLii1AM W. Patton, D.D. The 20th edition of this remarkable book has 
been exhausted at $2.00 per volume. 12mo, nearly 500 pp., cloth, $1.00. 


‘** Among all the books that have come to our notice, we are free to say, the book 
which will prove to the general reader, at once the most interesting and instructive. 
The volume is packed with interesting and well authenticated facts.”—Chicago Ad- 
vance, 


“* Many of the statements it contains are as incontrovertible as the doctrine of the 
attraction of gravitation.’”—WV. Y. Independent. 


“The compilation of facts is large, wide in its survey, wonderful in its resuits.”— 
New York Observer. 


“ The best contribution to the literature of prayer. We heartily commend it.”— 
Interior, Chicago. 

“* The book is adapted to confirm the faith of Christians who haye been troubled by 
infidel sophistries.”—NVational Baptist, Philadelphia. 


‘Dr Patton conducts anargument with such signal ability, he reasons so clearly and 
forcibly, running his lines of thought directly and coherently from premises to con- 
clusions, that it is an intellectual pleasure to follow his processes in the exercise of 
logic.” —Chicago Tribune. 


PRaisE Sones or IsRaEt. 
A New Rendering of the Book of Psalms. By JoHN D& Wirt, D.D., of the 
Theological Seminary, New Brunswick, N. J.,and Member of the American Old 
Testament Revision Company. Large octavo; Elegant style, with chaste 
adornments. Price, $2.00. 


A work of rare literary ability and artistic beauty, as the testimonials of some of our 
most distinguished scholars and critics declare. 


Pusty’s COMMENTARY ON THE Minor PROPHETS. 
The entire workin 2 vols. Cloth, $3.00 each. (In press.) 


Pusey’s *‘ DANIEL THE PROPHET.” 
1 yol., cloth, $3.00. (In preparation.) 
These commentaries have received most extraordinary commendations. 


* His Commentaries are of arare orderin ppt the results of the highest scholar- 

ship with the unction of the deepest spirituality. is ‘ Daniel’ is far beyond any other 

commentary ever written on that prophet. Inthe‘ Minor Prophets’ he has shownthe 

same careful, scholarly treatment and the same devout spirit. This work is rich in 

spiritual thought, and must prove abundantly suggestive to every thoughtful reader.”— 
oward Crosby, D.D. 


“Tam gratified to learn that you intend to bring out an American reprint of Pusey’s 

Minor Prophets, which is the most learned, able and instructive commentary on that 
ortion of Scripture, that has been produced in Great Britain.”—Prof. Henry Green, 
rinceton Seminary. 


“Tt gives me a heartfelt joy to learn of your design to republish Dr. Pusey’s Minor 
Prophets If ever there was profound learning combined with the spirit of ‘the little 
child,’ enlisted in the task of old Testament exposition, we see it here. I cannot al. 
Ways accept the Doctor’s solution of knotty points, but I tremble to compare my own 
questionings with his entire self-surrender to what seems to him the mind of the 
Spirit. Such critical skill and such humanity are rarely combined.—Bishop A. Cleve- 
land Coxe, Buffalo, N. Y. 


«*T consider Dr. Pusey’s Commentary on the Minor Prophets to be a most valuable 
work; [have studied it with great profit and much pleasure and benefit, and I am most 
happy to tog that an American edition is about to be published.” —WMorgan Dix, D.D., 

ew York. 


‘“*] am glad to hear that you propose to republish on this side of the Atlantic Pusey’s 
Commentary on the Minor Prophets. It isthe best exposition known to me of that 
section of the Sacred Scriptures. Pusey’s Hebrew scholarship was undoubted: hig 
jearning was extensive; his acquaintance. particularly with patristic literature, was 
very large, and his heart was especially devout. His well-known church views do not 


PUBLICATIONS OF FUNK & WAGNALLS, NEW YORK. 


i 


obtrude themselves, and alike in his comments on Daniel and the Minor Prophets he 
seems to me to be on his knees as he studies—seeking only to know God’s meaning and 
desiring only to do God’s will. I have gone through his Daniel chapter by chapter— 
wondering even more at the reverence ftu~n at the ivarning of the expositor.”— Wm. 
M. Taylor, D.D., New York. 

“« Dr. Pusey’s ‘Commentary on the Minor Prophets’ will certainly be an interesting 
and valuable addition to your list of publications.”—PAillips Brooks, D.D., Boston. 

“« The republication of Dr. Pusey’s Commentary on the Minor Prophets is much to 
be desired. A work of such rare seholarship, y acement and devotional spirit ought to 
be far more widely known inthis country. am glad to hear that a New York house 
has undertaken the reprint.”—Bishop F. D. Huntington, of Central New York. 


RevisEeD New Testament, (Teacher's Edition.) 
With New Index and Concordance, Harmony of the Gospels, Maps, Parellel 
Passages, and many other Indispensable Helps. Cloth, $1.50. 


Revisers’ ENGLisH. 
A spicy criticism on the English of the Revisers of the New Testament. By 
REv. GEO. WASHINGTON Moon, England. 12mo, cloth, 75 cents. 


Rock tHat 1s HigHER THAN I. 


A beautiful gift book suitable at all seasons. By REV. JoHN EpGaR JOHNSON. 
8vo, cloth, 75 cents, 


Rome 1n AMERICA, 
By Justin Fuuton, D.D. 12mo, paper, 30 cents; cloth, 75 cents. 


SaBBaTH FoR Man, Tue, 
With special reference to the rights of Workingmen, based on Scripture, and a 
Symposium of Correspondence with more than 250 representative Men of all 
Nations and Denominations. By Rev. WrLpuR F. Crafts. Large 12mo, $1.50. 


The author has gathered an immense amount of information from all parts of the 
world bearing on the present state of Sabbath observance, existing Sabbath laws, the 
views of jeading men in reference to the Sabbath, and a full bibliography of Sabbath 
literature. Itis a book that ought to find its way into every family circie in the land. 


Scuarr-Herzoa EncycLopepia or Rexicious KNow1EpcE; 
or, Dictionary of Biblical, Historical, Doctrinal and Practical Theology. Based 
on the Real-Encyklopddie of Herzog, Pitt and Hauck. Edited by Puri 
ScuaFr, D.D., LL.D., Professor in Union Theological Seminary, assisted by 
REV. SAMUEL Jackson, M.A., and Rev. D. 8S. Scuarr. Complete in 3 volumes. 
Royal 8vo, 2,50 pp., cloth, each $6.00; sheep, $7.50; half morocco, $9.00; full 
morocco, gilt, $12.00. 


“It is worthy of its name, contains the matter of the great German work in which 
we Americans are interested, with many new contributions from the most competent 
specialists among ourselves. It will be of ig and lasting yalue to editors, students, 
professors and clergymen.”—Jokn Hall, D.D., New York. 


** The articles are concise, yet full. The volume is a mine of fresh and interesting 
information on all Scriptural and ecclesiastical matters in which lie pure nuggets ready 
for the hand of the seeker. , The work furnishes ample proof of laborious carefulness 
and vigilant accuracy.”—W. Ormiston, D.D., LL.D., New York. 


“ The Schaff-Herzog is the very best Encyclopedia published in any language. For 
variety, amplitude and exactness of useful information in the branches of knowledge 
covered by it, Lam acquainted with no work that equals it.”.—Prof. Roswell D. Hitch- 
cock, D.D., New York. 


* It is certain that this Encyclopedia will fill a place in our Theological Literature in 
bleh for a long time, it will have no rival.”—Prof. A. A. Hodge, D.D., Princeton Theo. 
miumnary. 


“Dr. Schaff’s ‘ Religious Encyclopedia’ may well be called the joint product of the 
scholarship of the world, Itistheresult not pols of any one thinker or one class of 
thinkers, but of scholars and schools widely diversified in their intellectual habits and 
tastes, It not aes deserves to form a part of every good library for students of general 
literature, but it is pre-eminently valuable as forming in itself a compact theological 
library.”—Prof,. Edward A, Park, D.D , 

“ [have long been acquainted with the original work of Herzog, which in scientific 
structure and profound learning has held the first place among works of itskind. The 

resent edition, to which Dr, Schaff’s accomplished supervision adds so much worth, 

sinvaluable.”—Julius H. Seelye, Amherst College. 


“IT am delighted with the ‘ Religious Encyclopedia’ edited by Dr. Schaff, who has 
certainly enriched our American libraries with a greater store of ripe sacred knowl- 
edge than any other living scholar. This encyclopedia is invaluable for scope of sub- 
jects, for richness of knowkdge, and for general reliableness of judgment.”—Rev. 
Henry Ward Beecher. 


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